Clinical Trials

Some of our more recent clinical trials are summarised below. See papers for more information about clinical trials.

Acne

S Cotton and R Marks, Accurate wide field machine assessment of Acne and Rosacea, 16 th International Congress for Bioengineering and the Skin, Orlando, Florida, 29-30 October 2004.

Being able to measure the extent of acne accurately will help doctors to monitor and assess treatment regimes. This study was devised to assess the possibility of quantifying the degree and severity of acne and rosacea using non-contact SIAscopy. The results showed that data obtained from non-contact SIAscopy correlated well with clinical evaluation of acne, suggesting that non-contact SIAscopy could provide an objective method of quantifying acne.

Cosmetics

Skin aging

Matts, P.J., Carey, J., Cotton, S., Chromophore Mapping: a new technique to characterize aging human skin, in vivo. American Academy of Dermatology, February 2005.

Cosmetics developers need to be able to quantify objectively the effectiveness of their products. This study was carried out in conjunction with The Proctor & Gamble Company, and examined the skin of 400 women in different age groups using contact SIAscopy. The results showed that there were clear differences between SIAscans of younger skin and older skin, in particular within the haemoglobin and melanin views and the quantity of collagen.

Malignant melanoma

Diagnosis

Schulze, H.J., and Klaas, S. SIAscopy for in vivo diagnosis of atypical pigmented skin lesions superior to dermoscopy. Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (poster), October 2003.

Even experts don’t always agree on the clinical or dermoscopic features that indicate melanoma. A method that provides clinicians with objective data could be of great help in the accurate diagnosis of melanoma. This study examined 269 lesions presenting for excision biopsy at Fachklinik Hornheide, Munster, Germany. The lesions were imaged with a SIAscope before removal for histological diagnosis, and the SIAscan results compared with the histological results. SIAscopy was found to be not only faster than other diagnostic methods and reproducible, but also had a higher level of sensitivity than the seven-point checklist in validating melanoma.

Triaging

Kenealy, J. Townsend, P., Smith, J., Knowles, L., and Harvey, A. Assessment of Nurse-led screening of pigmented lesions using the SIAscope. Presented at the British Association of Plastic Surgeons summer meeting, 2004, Dublin.

General practitioners see few melanomas so are unable to build up the experience needed to accurately identify this form of skin cancer. Increasing public awareness of melanoma has raised the workload of specialists due to a rise in the number of referrals. This study aimed to test the SIAscope as a triaging tool for use by skin cancer clinical nurse specialists, and investigated 887 patients at the Frenchay Hospital Pigmented Lesion Clinic. The results showed that use of the SIAscope could reduce the number of benign lesions seen by the consultant and also help to identify melanomas.

Non-melanoma skin cancer

Tehrani, H., Walls, J., Cotton, S., Sassoon, E., and Hall, P. A novel imaging technique for the improved management of non-melanoma skin cancer, 10th Congress on Cancers of Skin, Vienna, 2005.

Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) is the commonest form of tumour, but clinical diagnosis, even for experts, is often challenging and may result in unnecessary excisions or false negatives. A technique to help identify NMSC would be hugely beneficial. This study involved 222 patients at the Departments of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norwich, and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. SIAscopic images were taken of their lesions and compared with the results of incision or excision biopsy. The results showed that the SIAscope was highly sensitive (97%) and specific (95%) in identifying NMSCs.

Psoriasis

Novakovic, L., Hawk, J., Assessing the Efficacy of PUVA and narrowband UVB (TL-01) Phototherapy for Psoriasis by Spectrophotometric Intracutaneous Analysis, 14 th Annual Congress on Photobiology (ICP2004).

PUVA and NB-UVB treatments for severe psoriasis are costly, take up to eight weeks and are not always effective. The ability to identify at an early stage whether such treatment is likely to be successful has great potential benefits, in terms of cost, time and patient comfort. This study identified markers seen with the SIAscope, punctuate dots, which correlated with the success or lack of success of PUVA or NB-UVB treatment.