Smartphone-based thermography in flap surgery: A systematic review and meta-analysis of perforator identification

Background: Thermography can be used in pre -operative planning of free perforator flap surgeries. Thermography assesses skin temperature by measuring the quantity of infrared radiation observed. In this meta -analysis, authors assess the sensitivity of smartphone-based thermal imaging (SBTI) in the detection of perforators and analyze the difference between static and dynamic imaging. Materials and methods: Authors followed the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews and metaanalyses. The meta package in R was used to conduct the meta -analysis. The "metaprop" function was used to calculate the overall sensitivity estimate and 95% confidence interval. The "metaprop.one" function was used to calculate subgroup estimates for static and dynamic study types. The "metareg" function was used to conduct meta -regression analyses to explore sources of heterogeneity. Results: This study includes seven articles with 1429 perforators being evaluated. The overall proportion of the sensitivities was estimated to be 0.8754 (95% CI: 0.7542; 0.9414) using a random effects model. The heterogeneity of the studies was high, as indicated by the tau -2 value of 1.2500 (95% CI: 0.4497; 8.4060) and the I-2 value of 92.6% (95% CI: 88.1%; 95.4%). The pooled sensitivity for static imaging was 0.8636 (95%CI: 0.6238-0.9603) with a tau -2 of 2.0661 and a tau of 1.4374, while the pooled sensitivity for dynamic imaging was slightly higher (p = 0.7016) at 0.8993 (95%CI: 0.7412-0.9653) with a smaller tau -2 of 0.8403 and a tau of 0.9167.
Conclusion: Further studies need to confirm that SBTI is a reliable and convenient technique for detecting perforators for the pre-operative planning of free perforator flap surgeries.