Aguirre, Juan and Gasteiger, Christine and Hindelang, Benedikt and Seeger, Markus and Bereznhoi, Andrei and Weidenfeld, Ina and Darsow, Ulf and Stiel, Andre C. and Steimle-Grauer, Susanne Annette and Posch, Christian and Biedermann, Tilo and Ntziachristos, Vasilis (2025) Non-invasive characterization of melanoma depth at single-cell resolution. JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ACADEMY OF DERMATOLOGY AND VENEREOLOGY, 39 (11). pp. 1945-1954. ISSN 0926-9959, 1468-3083
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
BackgroundEfficient staging and management of cutaneous melanoma, one of today's deadliest skin cancers, requires non-invasive determination of tumour depth (Breslow depth). However, current imaging technologies lack the necessary contrast or penetration to measure Breslow depth.ObjectivesTo determine if raster-scanning optoacoustic mesoscopy (RSOM) can fill this gap in dermatology.MethodsWe used phantoms to optimize RSOM for melanoma imaging and demonstrated its capability to image melanocytes at single-cell resolution in deep tissue. We then compared RSOM's ability to measure Breslow depth against the clinical standard in a pilot study. For the phantoms studies, we compared the ability of an optimized RSOM system to measure the concentration and diameter of single melanoma cells against gold-standard microscopy methods. For the pilot clinical study, we used linear regression to compare RSOM's Breslow depth against the clinical standard, obtaining the goodness of fit (R2) and the p-value. For the pilot clinical study, we imaged nine lesions: 7 superficially spreading melanomas, 1 benign dysplastic nevus and 1 blue nevus. The average age of the patients was 56.2 +/- 12.5 years. We also imaged 10 non-lesional skin areas from healthy volunteers.MethodsWe used phantoms to optimize RSOM for melanoma imaging and demonstrated its capability to image melanocytes at single-cell resolution in deep tissue. We then compared RSOM's ability to measure Breslow depth against the clinical standard in a pilot study. For the phantoms studies, we compared the ability of an optimized RSOM system to measure the concentration and diameter of single melanoma cells against gold-standard microscopy methods. For the pilot clinical study, we used linear regression to compare RSOM's Breslow depth against the clinical standard, obtaining the goodness of fit (R2) and the p-value. For the pilot clinical study, we imaged nine lesions: 7 superficially spreading melanomas, 1 benign dysplastic nevus and 1 blue nevus. The average age of the patients was 56.2 +/- 12.5 years. We also imaged 10 non-lesional skin areas from healthy volunteers.MethodsWe used phantoms to optimize RSOM for melanoma imaging and demonstrated its capability to image melanocytes at single-cell resolution in deep tissue. We then compared RSOM's ability to measure Breslow depth against the clinical standard in a pilot study. For the phantoms studies, we compared the ability of an optimized RSOM system to measure the concentration and diameter of single melanoma cells against gold-standard microscopy methods. For the pilot clinical study, we used linear regression to compare RSOM's Breslow depth against the clinical standard, obtaining the goodness of fit (R2) and the p-value. For the pilot clinical study, we imaged nine lesions: 7 superficially spreading melanomas, 1 benign dysplastic nevus and 1 blue nevus. The average age of the patients was 56.2 +/- 12.5 years. We also imaged 10 non-lesional skin areas from healthy volunteers.ResultsBy utilizing ultra-wideband frequency detection and optimized illumination wavelength, we show that RSOM achieves non-invasive imaging of melanoma at the resolution of single melanocytes, penetrating more than 3 mm into the skin. The agreement between RSOM and the standard-of-care histological assessment was R2 = 0.886 (p = 0.0002) for Breslow depth determination.ConclusionsRSOM provides non-invasive imaging performance that correlates with the Breslow depth determination. Further work is needed to confirm these findings and to test RSOM against other non-invasive methods.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | REFLECTANCE CONFOCAL MICROSCOPY; HIGH-FREQUENCY ULTRASOUND; MALIGNANT-MELANOMA; CUTANEOUS MELANOMA; THICKNESS; cells; imaging; melanoma; melanoma classification |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 570 Life sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Biophysik und physikalische Biochemie |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Apr 2026 09:18 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Apr 2026 09:18 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/67704 |
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