Acute discrimination between superficial-partial and deep-partial thickness burns in a preclinical model with laser speckle imaging

•We characterized laser speckle imaging (LSI) in a preclinical burn wound model.•LSI obtained blood-flow information of superficial-partial and deep-partial thickness burn wounds.•Blood-flow of superficial-partial and deep-partial burns differed significantly.•Results suggest the use of LSI to clinically evaluating burn wounds.

A critical need exists for a robust method that enables early discrimination between superficial-partial and deep-partial thickness burn wounds. In this study, we report on the use of laser speckle imaging (LSI), a simple, non-invasive, optical imaging modality, to measure acute blood flow dynamics in a preclinical burn model. We used a heated brass comb to induce burns of varying severity to nine rats and collected raw speckle reflectance images over the course of three hours after burn. We induced a total of 12 superficial-partial and 18 deep-partial thickness burn wounds. At 3 h after burn we observed a 28% and 44% decrease in measured blood flow for superficial-partial and deep-partial thickness burns, respectively, and that these reductions were significantly different (p = 0.00007). This preliminary data suggests the potential role of LSI in the clinical management of burn wounds.