Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 060042 Bucharest, Romania.
Sensors (Basel). 2023 Apr 11;23(8):3888. doi: 10.3390/s23083888.
Skin optical inspection is an imperative procedure for a suspicious dermal lesion since very early skin cancer detection can guarantee total recovery. Dermoscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, optical coherence tomography, multispectral imaging, multiphoton laser imaging, and 3D topography are the most outstanding optical techniques implemented for skin examination. The accuracy of dermatological diagnoses attained by each of those methods is still debatable, and only dermoscopy is frequently used by all dermatologists. Therefore, a comprehensive method for skin analysis has not yet been established. Multispectral imaging (MSI) is based on light-tissue interaction properties due to radiation wavelength variation. An MSI device collects the reflected radiation after illumination of the lesion with light of different wavelengths and provides a set of spectral images. The concentration maps of the main light-absorbing molecules in the skin, the chromophores, can be retrieved using the intensity values from those images, sometimes even for deeper-located tissues, due to interaction with near-infrared light. Recent studies have shown that portable and cost-efficient MSI systems can be used for extracting skin lesion characteristics useful for early melanoma diagnoses. This review aims to describe the efforts that have been made to develop MSI systems for skin lesions evaluation in the last decade. We examined the hardware characteristics of the produced devices and identified the typical structure of an MSI device for dermatology. The analyzed prototypes showed the possibility of improving the specificity of classification between the melanoma and benign nevi. Currently, however, they are rather adjuvants tools for skin lesion assessment, and efforts are needed towards a fully fledged diagnostic MSI device.
皮肤光学检查对于可疑的皮肤病变是必要的程序，因为早期发现皮肤癌可以保证完全康复。皮肤镜检查、共焦激光扫描显微镜、光相干断层扫描、多光谱成像、多光子激光成像和 3D topography 是用于皮肤检查的最杰出的光学技术。这些方法中的每一种方法所达到的皮肤科诊断准确性仍存在争议，只有皮肤镜检查经常被所有皮肤科医生使用。因此，尚未建立皮肤分析的综合方法。多光谱成像 (MSI) 基于光与组织相互作用的特性，因为辐射波长的变化。MSI 设备在病变处用不同波长的光照射后收集反射辐射，并提供一组光谱图像。可以从这些图像的强度值中检索到皮肤中主要光吸收分子（发色团）的浓度图，有时甚至可以用于更深层的组织，因为它们与近红外光相互作用。最近的研究表明，便携式和具有成本效益的 MSI 系统可用于提取有助于早期黑色素瘤诊断的皮肤病变特征。本综述旨在描述过去十年中为开发用于皮肤病变评估的 MSI 系统所做的努力。我们检查了所生产设备的硬件特性，并确定了用于皮肤科的 MSI 设备的典型结构。分析的原型表明了改善黑素瘤和良性痣之间分类特异性的可能性。然而，目前它们只是皮肤病变评估的辅助工具，需要努力开发功能齐全的诊断 MSI 设备。
