Lucid’s Solutions May Avoid Surgical Biopsy of Patients

Lucid’s VivaNet telemedicine server and its VivaScope confocal imagers, which are useful for sharing, reviewing and diagnosing noninvasive digital images of skin cells via the internet, may bypass the need to surgically biopsy many patients.

The technology will relay on using special microscopes to digitally image a patient’s skin. The cellular resolution images may then be used by physicians to assist in forming a clinical judgment for a variety of skin conditions, including, for example, melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, actinic keratoses, and contact dermatitis.

A typical VivaScope imaging session produces two types of images of the patient’s skin like dermatoscopic quality, full-color macroscopic pictures and microscopic, cellular resolution images. Like a routine biopsy, the images can then be read by a dermatologist or a pathologist and the diagnosis presented to the patient.

Jay Eastman, CEO of Lucid, said: “VivaScope imaging sessions require only 5 to 10 minutes of a physician’s assistant’s time.

“Just as MRI and CT scans have largely eliminated the need for routine exploratory surgery, in-vivo confocal imaging may one day eliminate the need for routine invasive skin biopsy.”