Skin cancer margin detection using nanosensitive optical coherence tomography and a comparative study with confocal...

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Dermatology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Excision biopsy and histology are standard for skin diagnostics but are invasive and time-consuming.
• Non-invasive imaging techniques are needed to improve skin disease diagnosis and management.
• Conventional Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) has resolution limits for detecting subtle structural changes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present nanosensitive OCT (nsOCT), an enhanced OCT technique with nanoscale sensitivity.
• To demonstrate nsOCT's capability in detecting minute structural differences in ex vivo human skin.
• To evaluate nsOCT for distinguishing skin cancer margins from healthy tissue.

Main Methods:

• Development and application of nanosensitive OCT (nsOCT) using a broadband supercontinuum laser.
• Testing nsOCT on phantoms with sub-micron periodic structures to detect nanoscale differences.
• Applying nsOCT to ex vivo human skin tissue to analyze margins of cancerous lesions.
• Comparison of nsOCT images with high-resolution confocal microscopy images.

Main Results:

• nsOCT successfully detected structural differences of a few nanometers in phantoms.
• The technique distinguished nanoscale structural changes at skin cancer margins from healthy tissue in en face images.
• Comparison with confocal microscopy confirmed nsOCT's ability to identify structural differences at the skin cancer margin.

Conclusions:

• Nanosensitive OCT (nsOCT) provides nanoscale sensitivity for imaging biological tissues.
• nsOCT shows promise for non-invasive detection of skin cancer margins.
• This advanced imaging modality could significantly improve dermatological diagnostics.