Diagnosis of skin lesions through prototype clinical device with diffuse reflectance spectroscopy

Abstract

Cancerous and precancerous skin conditions occupy one of the leading places in oncology. Early detection of suspects and temporary referrals to a specialist are critical to successful treatment. Numerous optical techniques are used for obtaining a new data from cutaneous neoplasia. Diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy is one of these techniques due to its high sensitivity in detecting subtle tissue alterations. Light scattering events inside the skin tissues change significantly in the development stage of skin lesions. These changes in the tissue scattering properties affect the diffuse reflectance spectrum and provide classification of different skin lesions based on diffuse reflectance measurements. We have investigated diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy for diagnostic of skin lesions and as a result, an optical device for clinical application was developed. The current study shows the obtained results by the prototype device for the reflective ability of pigmented and non-pigmented skin benign, dysplastic, and malignant cutaneous lesions in vivo.