Optical Biopsy of Human Skin – A Tool for Cutaneous Tumours’ Diagnosis

A short review of the recent status of optical biopsy of human skin as a tool for cutaneous tumour detection will be presented. Basically laserand lightinduced fluorescence and diffuse reflectance techniques incorporated in so called “optical biopsy” technique used for skin tissue analysis will be described and some original results and findings from our own investigations will be commented as well. Fluorescence spectroscopy gives information mainly about changes in the biochemical content, and diffuse reflectance about morphological changes and pigments’ concentrations in the human skin. Both techniques are applied separately and as a common tool for early skin cancer diagnosis, give high accuracy and objective diagnosis, applicable into the clinical practice. Skin optical biopsy diagnostic clinical trial is currently under implementation in the frames of University Hospital “Tsaritsa Yoanna – ISUL” and with broadening of the database with fluorescence and reflectance spectra of major skin benign and malignant pathologies we expect to receive objective tool for detection and evaluation of skin lesion type, which could become a basis for reliable system for skin cancer detection. Optical biopsy system is developed in the frames of Institute of Electronics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and consists of autofluorescence and diffuse reflectance channels for early skin tumour detection. Fibro-optical probe allows receiving of noninvasive spectral information for the tissues’ condition, which allows making highly-sensitive diagnosis of tissues in real time.