From Paper to Digitalized Body Map: A Reliability Study of the Pain Area

Area of Science:

• Medical imaging
• Pain assessment
• Digital health

Background:

• Computerized methods for analyzing pain drawings (PDs) offer potential for precise pain area measurement.
• Digitalization of PDs is a key step in enabling quantitative pain analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the reliability of examiners reproducing patient PDs into a digital format.
• To determine if digitalized PDs can be reliably measured by different examiners.

Main Methods:

• An intra-rater and inter-rater reliability study was conducted.
• The protocol involved scanning paper PDs, digital reproduction, and calculating pain area in pixels and percentages.
• Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), SEM, and SDD were used to assess reliability.

Main Results:

• Excellent intra-rater reliability was observed, with ICCs ranging from 0.991 to 0.992.
• Excellent inter-rater reliability was found between examiners (ICC=0.976), indicating high consistency.
• Specific examiner pairs showed even higher reliability, suggesting consistent application of the digital method.

Conclusions:

• Reproducing paper PDs into digital format demonstrates excellent intra- and inter-rater reliability.
• This computerized approach allows for more precise analysis of pain extent.
• The findings support the use of digitalized PDs for clinical and research applications in pain assessment.