Figure 5
Histological (a) examples of mature follicles below (left) and above (right) our DOP-based, automatically-determined collagen damage boundary. In (b), we provide examples of hair shaft shadow (white arrow), intact superficial hair shaft cross section (green arrows), and deep follicle within burn zone (red arrow), and the automatic detection of these structures using our image processing routine (c), with the shadow being excluded from further processing. Maps were generated for en face visualization of the locations of identified follicles (d). In (e), the depths of those follicles below the tissue surface are encoded against the DOP-based burn depth estimation (see Fig. 2). Our healing potential map directly compares these two parameters as \(\text{Distance (Dist.) to burn depth} = \text{depth}_\text{follicle} - \text{depth}_\text{burn}\), where follicles above the border of collagen injury (displayed in green) would be presumed undamaged, and follicles below this border (displayed in red) would be presumed at risk for damage.
