Du Yong, Liu Chih-Hao, Lei Ling, Singh Manmohan, Li Jiasong, Hicks M John, Larin Kirill V, Mohan Chandra
University of Houston, Department of Biomedical Engineering, 3605 Cullen Boulevard, Houston, Texas 77204, United States.
Texas Children's Hospital, Pathology & Immunology and Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, 6621 Fannin Street, Houston, Texas 77030, United States.
J Biomed Opt. 2016 Apr 30;21(4):46002. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.21.4.046002.
Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a connective tissue disease that results in excessive accumulation of collagen in the skin and internal organs. Overall, SSc has a rare morbidity (276 cases per million adults in the United States), but has a 10-year survival rate of 55%. Currently, the modified Rodnan skin score (mRSS) is assessed by palpation on 17 sites on the body. However, the mRSS assessed score is subjective and may be influenced by the experience of the rheumatologists. In addition, the inherent elasticity of skin may bias the mRSS assessment in the early stage of SSc, such as oedematous. Optical coherence elastography (OCE) is a rapidly emerging technique, which can assess mechanical contrast in tissues with micrometer spatial resolution. In this work, the OCE technique is applied to assess the mechanical properties of skin in both control and bleomycin (BLM) induced SSc-like disease noninvasively. Young’s modulus of the BLM-SSc skin was found be significantly higher than that of normal skin, in both the in vivo and in vitro studies (p<0.05 p<0.05 ). Thus, OCE is able to differentiate healthy and fibrotic skin using mechanical contrast. It is a promising new technology for quantifying skin involvement in SSc in a rapid, unbiased, and noninvasive manner.
系统性硬化症（SSc）是一种结缔组织疾病，会导致皮肤和内脏器官中胶原蛋白过度积聚。总体而言，SSc发病率较低（美国每百万成年人中有276例），但10年生存率为55%。目前，改良罗德南皮肤评分（mRSS）通过触诊身体上的17个部位来评估。然而，mRSS评估分数具有主观性，可能会受到风湿病学家经验的影响。此外，皮肤的固有弹性可能会在SSc早期（如水肿期）使mRSS评估产生偏差。光学相干弹性成像（OCE）是一种迅速兴起的技术，它能够以微米级空间分辨率评估组织中的力学对比度。在这项工作中，OCE技术被用于无创评估对照和博来霉素（BLM）诱导的类SSc疾病中皮肤的力学特性。在体内和体外研究中均发现，BLM-SSc皮肤的杨氏模量显著高于正常皮肤（p<0.05，p<0.05）。因此，OCE能够利用力学对比度区分健康皮肤和纤维化皮肤。它是一种有前景的新技术，能够以快速、无偏差且无创的方式量化SSc中皮肤受累情况。
