Impact of Digital Guidance on Accuracy, Reliability, and Time Efficiency of Wound Measurements

Wound size measurement is essential for clinical assessment, as it can indicate the patient’s healing progress and influence clinical decisions. Healthcare providers traditionally use physical wound measurement methods, such as rulers and digital calipers; however, these methods have limitations. Our team developed software to compute wound measurements from 3-D scans. The software provides unguided and guided wound measurement modes in which the measurements are identified manually and semi-automatically, respectively. Healthcare providers (N=23) measured (i.e., length, width, and depth) six simulated wounds using physical, unguided software, and guided software methods. The accuracy, inter-rater reliability, and time efficiency of these methods were evaluated. The guided software method demonstrated more favorable overall accuracy (97.68%), inter-rater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC): 0.957), and time efficiency (48.15 s) compared to the physical (93.29%; ICC: 0.833; 94.89 s) and unguided software (93.71% ICC: 0.935; 105.04 s) methods. These results indicate that digital tools with standardized measurement processes may improve the validity and efficiency of wound measurements, potentially enhancing clinical practice and training.