Progress and Prospects on Skin Imaging Technology

Dear Colleagues, 

Skin imaging methods are currently methods that allow detailed analysis of healthy skin or lesions in a non-invasive way, with wide applications in both clinical, surgical and aesthetic dermatology. These techniques include dermatoscopy, skin ultrasound with high frequency transducers, skin spectroscopy, optical coherence tomography and last but not least, confocal reflectance microscopy. The latter has undergone a spectacular evolution in recent years, as a diagnostic method, as a method of monitoring the evolution of lesions and as a method of intraoperative determination of tumor resection margins, allowing a skin evaluation comparable to histological examination.

Thus, having the conviction of the importance that these techniques represent, as well as the primary role that they will play in the future in the field of dermatology, we want to propose a special issue entitled "Progress and Prospects on Skin Imaging Technology" in which we want to point both essential aspects of skin imaging techniques and their current role in the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of tumoral, non-tumoral and cosmetic pathologies, as well as future directions of these techniques and how artificial intelligence will have a role in their interpretation.

The use of these methods in general and of confocal reflectance microscopy in particular is also due to the increase in life expectancy associated with the presence of more common skin tumor pathologies, generally in photoexposed areas, where imaging diagnosis, without biopsy, begins to become an important requirement.

The most important characteristics are high resolution (up to almost cellular level), high specificity and sensitivity, and a non invasive technique that which provides images of the epidermis and the papillary dermis. Those offer the possibility of obtaining clear diagnoses in the absence of histopathological examination, showing once again the need to popularize and deepen these techniquesin order to increase the spectrum of diseases in which it can be stated clear elements of non-invasive diagnosis.

The articles considered to be suitable for this issue are both the original studies that bring an element of novelty in the role that skin imaging techniques have in dermatology, but also reviews that detail how these techniques work, the type of pathologies for which they are more used, as well as future perspectives for their use in vivo or ex vivo.

Dr. Vlad Mihai Voiculescu
Guest Editor

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• artificial intelligence
• skin imaging
• skin microscopy
• reflectance confocal microscopy
• high resolution skin ultrasound
• dermatoscopy
• skin spectroscopy