A study by the Dermatology Departments at Roskilde and Gentofte Hospitals, Copenhagen, which documents how Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) can monitor the effectiveness of PDT treatment on superficial Basal Cell Carcinomas (BCCs), has been awarded gold at the 22nd World Congress of Dermatology. The investigation was carried out using the Michelson Diagnostics’ VivoSight OCT Scanner.
The study performed on BCC patients describes the OCT morphology in Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer (NMSC) lesions during PDT treatment and assesses how OCT morphology before, during and after treatment reflects the treatment outcome at three months follow-up.
Presented by Lotte Themstrup, Mette Mogensen and G.B.E. Jemec from the Copenhagen hospitals, the e-poster summary of the study was selected for one of ten gold awards by the Congress Scientific Committee from a field of 2,400 submissions. The 22nd World Congress of Dermatology began on 24 May in Seoul and is hosted by the International League of Dermatological Societies.
The key benefit of photodynamic therapy (PDT) of NMSCs over conventional surgical excision is that it is non-invasive and therefore avoids surgery scars. This is a major advantage for the patient, because this type of skin cancer frequently occurs on the face, where disfiguring scars are highly undesirable. However, because no tissue is removed for analysis in the PDT procedure, it can be difficult for clinicians to be sure that they have successfully treated the tumour, and this has limited its clinical use. The study shows that the use of the VivoSight OCT scanner to image skin before, during and after PDT treatment, could solve this problem.
The VivoSight scanner uses OCT which provides images of sub-surface tissue similar to ultrasound, but at far higher resolution, enabling the clinician to see critical details of the skin epidermis and dermis in real time. Michelson Diagnostics has already obtained CE mark and FDA clearance for clinical use of the scanner in Europe and USA, and it is being evaluated at leading cancer clinics in Europe and USA.
