Doctors may soon be able to ‘see’ under the skin as a less-invasive
way to detect skin cancer.
Since the 1990s ophthalmologists have used an imaging technique
called optical coherence tomography (OCT) to examine eyes, and recently
dermatologists have begun to show interest in this technique as a non-invasive
way to detect skin diseases, including cancer.
OCT provides high-resolution images, and when used for
dermatological purposes, it can show a 3-D network of blood vessels beneath the
skin. Researchers from the Medical University Vienna (MUW) in Austria, as well
as Ludwig Maximilians University in Germany, used OCT to look at both healthy patches
of skin and allergy-induced patches of skin. Scientists were able to see that
the blood flow in the vessels to the healthy skin was drastically different
than the blood flow in the vessels to the unhealthy skin.
“The condition of the vascular network carries important
information on tissue health and its nutrition,” said Rainer Leitgeb, lead
researcher at MUW. He goes on to mention that there is a lot to learn about
this technique and that the value of this information is very much underutilized.
The hope is that OCT will eventually allow physicians to
reduce the number of biopsies performed on patients, but also assess how
quickly a tumor is expected to grow. For patients undergoing treatment, OCT
could help monitor progress.
