"Optical Coherence Tomography for Non-invasive Diagnosis of Basal Cell Carcinoma" 

Keywords: Basal cell carcinoma, optical coherence tomography, non-invasive diagnosis.

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common form of skin cancer. Currently, diagnosis is established by a biopsy (skin specimen). A biopsy is painful and must be evaluated under the microscope. Therefore, the diagnosis has to be awaited, which takes one to two weeks. In this thesis we investigated if a scanner, optical coherence tomography (OCT), can replace a biopsy. The advantage of a scanner is that the physician can establish a diagnosis within minutes, after which treatment can be started.
Among 598 patient in three participating hospital we  investigated if OCT is an accurate method to detect BCC and if OCT is also cost-saving compared to a biopsy (regular care). OCT appeared to be non-inferior to a biopsy and in approximately two-thirds of the patients a biopsy could be omitted because a confident diagnosis could be made with OCT. Diagnosis with OCT also appeared to be cheaper compared to biopsy.