4.23 – External Transdermal Procedures

Disregarding its popularity in basic research, optical imaging (OI) primarily has been a clinical imaging modality and still bears a strong clinical potential. Attempts to exploit OI for deep tissue diagnostics spanned from diaphanography for the visualization of pneumatization of the facial sinus to the detection of breast lesions or differentiation of cutaneous disease. Despite a continuous presence in, for example, ophthalmology or dermatology, other clinical disciplines that increasingly have adopted radiographic or magnetic resonance imaging for the interrogation of subsurface pathology are recovering diagnostic OI. New sensitive imaging devices and the development of optical contrast agents have opened the field for new clinical applications of OI. Beyond lesion detection, the visualization of pathologic tissue properties has been performed using optical approaches in, for example, rheumatology and oncology.