Bedside diagnosis of skin cancer remains a challenging task. The real-time noninvasive technology of optical coherence tomography (OCT) masters a high diagnostic accuracy in basal cell carcinoma (BCC) but a lower specificity in recognizing imitators and other carcinomas. We investigate the delicate signal of papillary dermis using an in-house developed ultrahigh resolution OCT (UHR-OCT) system with shadow compensation and a commercial multi-focus high resolution OCT (HR-OCT) system for clinical BCC imaging. We find that the HR-OCT system struggled to resolve the dark band signal of papillary dermis where the UHR-OCT located this in all cases and detected changes in signal width. UHR-OCT is able to monitor extension and position of papillary dermis suggesting a novel feature for delineating superficial BCCs in pursuit of a fast accurate diagnosis. Comprehensive studies involving more patients are imperative in order to corroborate results.
Keywords: BCC; OCT; angiography; basal cell carcinoma; optical coherence tomography; papillary dermis; ultrahigh resolution; upper dermis.
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