Simple, noninvasive technique can assess collagen in the skin of scleroderma patients
Scleroderma (systemic sclerosis) is a rare, chronic autoimmune disease that causes the body to produce too much collagen, leading to the hardening and thickening of the skin and internal organs. For more than 50 years, physicians have relied on manually pinching the skin to assess its thickness, a subjective approach that remains central to the diagnosis of systemic sclerosis, assessment of…
Scleroderma, a rare, chronic autoimmune disease causing excessive collagen production, results in skin and organ hardening and thickening. Physicians have traditionally assessed skin thickness through manual pinching, a subjective practice leading to inconsistent diagnoses. A team at Boston University School of Medicine and the Department of Biomedical Engineering has developed a camera-based technique called spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) to detect skin changes in scleroderma patients.
SFDI involves shining harmless, non-contact light patterns on the skin and measuring the reflections. Compared to healthy controls, patients with scleroderma demonstrated lower SFDI light readings, which correlated with higher collagen buildup, increased skin thickness on ultrasound, and more pronounced skin scores. The technique successfully identified subtle skin changes not detectable through clinical examination, offering a potential objective method to monitor disease progression and treatment efficacy in scleroderma patients.
Written by urgent.news from Medical Xpress's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
