Multimodal large language model versus emergency physicians for burn assessment: a prospective non-inferiority study

In this prospective emergency department evaluation, a general-purpose multimodal model achieved non-inferior performance to emergency physicians for region-level TBSA estimation but performed substantially worse for burn depth classification. These findings support a narrowly defined adjunct role for TBSA estimation, while depth-dependent decisions should remain clinician-led and require further method development and external validation.