Assessment Tools of Radiation Skin Injury in Head and Neck Cancer: A Narrative Review of Preclinical and Clinical Studies

Radiation skin injury (RSI) is an unavoidable side effect of radiotherapy that delays the treatment process and affects patients' quality of life. However, RSI is easily overlooked in clinical practice with unified assessment methods. Although over 20 types of clinical scales have already been reported, they were never collated and systematically reorganized. In this review, we collected and categorized the RSI scales from the perspective of RSI-rated symptoms, patient self-feeling, the impact on quality of life, and psychological conditions, and summarize the common assessment modalities (both scoring scales and histopathological analysis) of preclinical RSI models. We also discuss the possibility of utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based radiomics for RSI assessment.