Noninvasive assessment of burn wound severity using optical technology: a review of current and future modalities

Clinical examination alone is not always sufficient to determine which burn wounds will heal spontaneously and which will require surgical intervention for optimal outcome. We present a review of optical modalities currently in clinical use and under development to assist burn surgeons in assessing burn wound severity, including conventional histology/light microscopy, laser Doppler imaging, indocyanine green videoangiography, near-infrared spectroscopy and spectral imaging, in vivo capillary microscopy, orthogonal polarization spectral imaging, reflectance-mode confocal microscopy, laser speckle imaging, spatial frequency domain imaging, photoacoustic microscopy, and polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography.