Clinical optical coherence tomography combined with multiphoton tomography of patients with skin diseases

We report on the first clinical study based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) in combination with multiphoton tomography (MPT) and dermoscopy. 47 patients with a variety of skin diseases and disorders such as skin cancer, psoriasis, hemangioma, connective tissue diseases, pigmented lesions, and autoimmune bullous skin diseases have been investigated with (i) state-of-the-art OCT systems for dermatology including multibeam swept source OCT, (H) the femtosecond laser multiphoton tomograph, and (iii) dermoscopes. Dermoscopy provides two-dimensional color images of the skin surface. OCT images reflect modifications of the intratissue refractive index whereas MPT is based on nonlinear excitation of endogenous fluorophores and second harmonic generation. A stack of cross-sectional OCT "wide field" images with a typical field of view of 5 x 2 mm(2) gave fast. information on the depth and the volume of the lesion. Multiphoton tomography provided 036 x 0.36 mm(2) horizontal/diagonal optical sections within seconds of a particular region. of interest with superior submicron resolution down to a [GRAPHICS] Scheme of the multi-beam OCT tissue depth of. 200 mu m. The combination of OCT and MPT provides a unique powerful optical imaging modality for early detection of skin cancer and other skin diseases, as well as for the evaluation of the efficiency of treatments. (C) 2009 by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim