In vivo optical coherence tomography for the detection, subtyping, and margin assessment of facial basal cell carcinoma: a comparative study with histopathology
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Jerjes, Waseem
Hamdoon, Zaid
Rashed, Dara
Hopper, Colin
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Background: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin cancer, with several subtypes that vary from one another in biological behaviour and therapeutic consequences. The aim of the study was to evaluate in vivo OCT diagnostic accuracy to detect and subtype facial BCCs, using histopathology as the gold standard. Patients and Methods: This single-centre, prospective, diagnostic accuracy study was carried out on 136 patients who were presenting with a total of 220 clinically suspicious facial lesions for BCC. All lesions were imaged by OCT before their surgical excision. OCT findings were compared to the histopathological results in the respect of detection of BCC, subtype, tumour depth, and margin status. Results: OCT showed an excellent diagnostic performance for the detection of BCC in general: sensitivity, 96.8%; specificity, 98.2%; and accuracy, 97.5%. The AUC for the detection of BCC was 0.97. Subtype sensitivity for OCT was highest for superficial, 93.1%, and nodular BCC, 92.1%, and marginally lower for micronodular, 89.3%, and infiltrative subtypes, 90.0%. Depth measurements of OCT-derived tumour strongly correlated with those obtained by histopathology: mean depth, 2.3 ± 0.9 mm for OCT versus 2.2 ± 0.8 mm for histopathology; p = 0.08. Conclusions: The performed OCT showed very good agreement in the detection, subtyping, and preoperative assessment of BCC facial lesions. In addition to its non-invasive characteristics, its robustness regarding the evaluation of tumour depth and margins makes OCT very promising for improved surgical planning by reducing unnecessary excisions.
Date Issued
2025-02
Date Acceptance
2025-01-28
Citation
Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2025, 14 (3)
ISSN
2077-0383
Publisher
MDPI AG
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Clinical Medicine
Volume
14
Issue
3
Copyright Statement
©2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)license (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/39941619
PII: jcm14030949
Subjects
ACTINIC KERATOSIS
ALGORITHM
basal cell carcinoma
BCC
DIFFERENTIATION
DISCRIMINATION
facial lesions
General & Internal Medicine
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Medicine, General & Internal
OCT
optical coherence tomography
Science & Technology
skin cancer
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
Switzerland
Article Number
949
Date Publish Online
2025-02-01