Autofluorescence imaging of the skin is an objective non-invasive technique for diagnosing pseudoxanthoma elasticum
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Date
2021
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Abstract
Pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE) is a rare multisystemic autosomal recessive connective tissue disease. In most cases, skin manifestations of PXE are the first to develop, followed later by severe ocular and cardiovascular complications. In our present study, in addition to dermoscopy, we introduced novel techniques, autofluorescence (AF) and diffuse reflectance (DR) imaging for the assessment of affected skin sites of five PXE patients. PXE-affected skin areas in most skin sites showed a previously observed pattern upon dermoscopic examination. With the novel imaging, PXE-affected skin lesions displayed high AF intensity. During our measurements, significantly higher mean, minimum and maximum AF intensity values were found in areas of PXE-affected skin when compared to uninvolved skin. Conversely, images acquired with the use of 660 and 940 nm illumination showed no mentionable difference. Our results demonstrate that AF imaging may be used in the in vivo diagnostics and quantification of the severity of the skin lesions of PXE patients. In addition, it is a safe, fast and cost-effective diagnostic method. AF imaging may be also used to objectively monitor the efficacy of the possible novel therapeutic approaches of PXE in the future.
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Funding Information: Funding: This work was supported by grants from the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary—NKFIH [FK_131916, 2019 (Semmelweis University, M.M.); K_132695, 2019 (Semmelweis University, T.A.)], EFOP-3.6.3-VEKOP-16-2017-00009 (P.A., S.B.) the ÚNKP-20-4-II-SE-7 (N.K.) and ÚNKP-20-3-I-SE-24 (S.Z.) New National Excellence Program of the Ministry For Innovation and Technology from the source of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund of Hungary and the European Regional Development Fund projects “Time-resolved autofluorescence methodology for non-invasive skin cancer diagnostics” [No. 1.1.1.2/16/I/001, agreement No. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/1/16/014 (A.L.)] and “Development and clinical validation of a novel cost effective multi-modal methodology for early diagnostics of skin cancers” [No. 1.1.1.2/16/I/001 agreement No. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/1/16/052 (I.L.)] and COST action CA16115 EuroSoftCalcNet. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
Autofluorescence imaging, Calcification, Dermoscopy, Diagnosis, Diffuse reflectance imaging, LED, Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, Quantitative analysis, 1.3 Physical sciences, 1.4 Chemical sciences, 2.6 Medical engineering, 1.1. Scientific article indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus database, Clinical Biochemistry
Citation
Farkas, K, Bozsányi, S, Plázár, D, Bánvölgyi, A, Fésűs, L, Anker, P, Zakariás, S, Lihacova, I, Lihachev, A, Lange, M, Arányi, T, Wikonkál, N M, Medvecz, M & Kiss, N 2021, 'Autofluorescence imaging of the skin is an objective non-invasive technique for diagnosing pseudoxanthoma elasticum', Diagnostics, vol. 11, no. 2, 260. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11020260