P. H. Chang1,2,3, P. H. Chang1,2,3 1Shriners Hospitals For Children-Boston,Boston, MA, USA 2Massachusetts General Hospital,Boston, MA, USA 3Harvard School Of Medicine,Brookline, MA, USA
Introduction: Wearable technology has emerged as a new source of medical devices. Google Glass has been trialed by several surgeons of various specialties for its unique combination of video and photographic recording and transmission, portability, and hands-free use which offers obvious advantages for the surgeon who is sterilely scrubbed in. Our department sought to assess the use of Google Glass as an image capturing device for assessment of burn wounds especially with regards to quality of images and ease of use.
Methods:
A retrospective analysis of pediatric burn patients admitted between May 2014 and June 2014 was performed. Inclusion criteria included all burn patients with at least 1% TBSA and a minimum depth of injury of partial thickness. Photographic consent was obtained from all parents of patients as per hospital regulations. The Glass device was used to take pictures of the patient's burn wounds. The hospital photographer then took pictures using a Nikon D7100 24 MP camera. The two images were compared side by side by an experienced burn surgeon and assessed as to the quality of image and ability to make an accurate diagnosis based on the images. Notes were taken by the Glass user as to issues that arose while taking the pictures.
Results:
5 patients had burn wounds assessed in this time period using both the Google Glass and the traditional hospital photographer. Despite the lower resolution of the Glass device (5 MP), 5 of 5 patients' Glass images were assessed by the experienced burn surgeon to be of adequate quality to provide the same information as the higher resolution pictures obtained by the hospital photographer. The hospital photographer was able to obtain pictures faster on average (approximately 1 second per image) compared to the Glass device (approximately 5 seconds per image). Issues that arose from use of the Glass included:
1) overheating and subsequent shutdown of the Glass device while in the heated environment of the burn operating room.
2) the lack of ability to focus the Glass lens and thus require the Glass user to be in close proximity to the burn wounds to obtain optimal pictures
3) the need to take extra care to disable automatic upload of images to Google Plus account to prevent transfer of sensitive patient information to Google servers which are by definition non HIPPA compliant.
Conclusion:
The Google Glass device is able to capture clinically accurate images of burn wounds. However, there are limiting factors to the technology as it currently stands that would need to be addressed before it could be fully utilized in a burn surgery practice.