Digital imaging in remote diagnosis of burns.

Images are capable of giving an accurate representation of skin color and have been used extensively in teaching about and researching burn therapy. The advance from analogue to digital imaging allows the remote transmission of the clinical information contained in the digital image of a burn, using a suitable system. The large size of these image files reduces transmission speed and makes data compression desirable. Compression, by means of the JPEG algorithm, of up to 50 times the original size of 38 digital images of burns suffered by 22 consecutive patients did not lessen its great usefulness in determining the depth of burn injuries, according to a group of experts in burn care. The success rate was close to 90%, both for non-compressed images in original BMP format (mean size:1500 Kb) and for compressed images with a Q index of 50 (30 Kb files), when compared with the clinical diagnoses confirmed one week after the accident.