Characterization of vitiligo with optical coherence tomography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) can noninvasively reconstruct the three-dimensional microstructure of skin and OCT has been commonly used for clinical studies. Additionally, the functional imaging abilities have been intensively investigated in the past few years such as angiography, spectroscopy, polarization, elasticity, etc. The previous reports have demonstrated that OCT can be a powerful tool for diagnoses of skin disorders. Vitiligo is a skin disorder by losing the pigment and the skin patches become white and have sharp margins. Generally, the patches start on the skin areas which are exposed to the sun. However, it is difficult to be identified before skin becomes white. Therefore, an imaging tool is required for diagnosis of the early-stage skin vitiligo. In this study, we use OCT for in vivo imaging of skin vitiligo and OCT is able to identify the loss of pigment in the early stage. The results demonstrated OCT could be a potential tool for the diagnosis of the early-stage vitiligo.