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Updated: Jun 30, 2026
Anterior High-Resolution Optical Coherence Tomography in the Diagnosis and Therapeutic Monitoring of Ocular Surface Squamous Neoplasia
Published on: August 9, 2024
Optical coherence tomography imaging of bullous diseases
M Mogensen1, H A Morsy, B M Nurnberg
1Department of Dermatology, Roskilde Hospital, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Roskilde, Denmark. mmg@regionsjaelland.dk
Background:
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive optical imaging technique with a micrometer resolution that may potentially offer real-time bedside imaging of sufficient detail to allow for morphological discrimination between different types of bullae.
Objective:
To explore the potential of OCT in bullous skin disorders by looking at a set of patients with skin blisters of known origin and study the OCT images for possible hallmarks of the blistering level.
Materials And Methods:
OCT provides cross-sectional, tomographic images of the skin. A consecutive series of patients were recruited and their lesions imaged by OCT: 3 patients with bullous pemphigoid (BP), 1 patient with extensive bullae following burns, 1 patient with pemphigus, 1 patient with subcorneal pustular dermatosis, and a patient with Dariers disease. The latter two were included due to similarity to pemphigus with respect to the level of defect cell adhesion.
Results:
In OCT images, BP bullae are easily depicted as dark, ovoid to round well-demarquated areas, and BP bulla morphology is clearly different from the burn blisters and the pemphigus-like disease with respect to the blistering level.
Discussion:
Differentiation of epidermal and subepidermal blisters is demonstrated using OCT. The variation within pemphigoid lesions and pemphigus-like diseases is however too subtle to allow for differential diagnosis; this may be ascribed to limited resolution. Enhanced resolution of OCT may overcome this obstacle.
