A dataset of optical spectra and clinical features acquired on human healthy skin and on skin carcinomas

Optical spectroscopy is studied to contribute to skin cancer diagnosis. Indeed, optical spectra are modified along cancer progression and provide complementary information (e.g., on metabolism and tissue structure) to clinical examination for surgical guidance [1,2]. The current original dataset is made of autofluorescence and diffuse reflectance spectra acquired in vivo on 131 patients' skin with the SpectroLive device [3,4]. Spatially-resolved spectroscopy measurements were performed using a multi-fiber optic probe featuring 4 distances (0.4-1 mm) between excitation and collection optical fibers: spatial resolution allows spectra acquired at different distances to carry information from different depths in skin tissues. Five types of autofluorescence spectra were acquired using five different wavelength excitations (on the 365-415 nm spectral range) in order to collect information on several skin endogenous fluorophores (e.g., flavins, collagen). A sixth light source (white broadband) was used to acquire diffuse reflectance spectra carrying information about skin scattering properties and skin endogenous absorbers such as melanin and hemoglobin. Patients were proposed to be included into the clinical trial if they were suspected of suffering from actinic keratoses (precancerous skin lesions) or from basal or squamous cell carcinomas: in all cases, complete diagnostics is provided in the dataset. To increase the interest of the dataset and evaluate the dependence of optical spectra (intensity, shape) not only on pathological states but also on healthy skin features (civil age, skin age, gender, phototype, anatomical site), spectra were acquired for all 131 patients on two so-called "reference" skin sites known to rarely suffer from skin cancer: palm of the hand (featuring a thick skin type) and inner wrist (featuring thin skin). Spectra are available in .tab files: first column displays the spectral range on which intensity spectra were recorded (317-788 nm) and each following column provides an intensity spectrum acquired by each spectrometer for a given combination of light source excitation and distance. Each of the 131 folders corresponding to each of the 131 patients contains a .json file providing patients clinical features: gender, civil age, skin age, phototype score and class. All .tab files names include anatomical site and anatomopathological diagnostics of the skin site on which spectra were acquired: codes were defined to match a letter or an acronym to each diagnostic and anatomical site. To ensure quality control, a spectrum was acquired on the same calibration standard before starting spectra acquisition on each patient. It is therefore possible to follow the impact of the acquisition optical chain ageing during the 4.5 years that the patients were included. This dataset can be used by epidemiologists for the characterization of populations affected by skin cancers (gender ratio, mean age, anatomical sites typically affected, etc.); it may also be used by researchers in artificial intelligence to develop innovative methods to process such data and contribute to non-invasive diagnostics of skin cancers whose incidence is steadily increasing.

Education and process change to improve skin health in a residential aged care facility

We report on an intervention and evaluation in relation to changes in staff knowledge, time spent on healing and wound prevention and proportion of wounds in the facilities before and after. A rapid review of recent peer-reviewed literature (2006-2016) found 14 education-based intervention articles and provided the background and context for this intervention. A cohort of 164 nurses and personal care workers and 261 residents at two aged care-approved facilities contributed to this intervention on the effect of education, mentoring and practice change on staff knowledge and wound prevalence between 2015 and 2016. There was a significant decrease in pressure injury prevalence and an increase in the early identification of potential wounds between phase 1 and 3 across the two facilities. Overall, registered nurses and enrolled nurses showed significant increase in mean knowledge scores. There was a reorganisation of time spent on various wound care and prevention strategies that better represented education and knowledge. Wound management or prevention education alone is not enough; this study, using an educational intervention in conjunction with resident engagement, practice change, mentorship, onsite champions for healthy skin and product choice suggestions, supported by an organisation that focuses on a healthy ageing approach, showed improvement across two residential sites.

Imaging Blood Vessel Morphology in Skin: Dynamic Optical Coherence Tomography as a Novel Potential Diagnostic Tool in Dermatology

Conventional optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables the visualization of morphological changes of skin cancer. The use of OCT in the diagnostic investigation and in the therapy decision of non-melanoma skin cancer and other skin changes is already established, and has found its way into routine practice. With the development of speckle-variance OCT, also named dynamic OCT (D-OCT), the vascular architecture and the blood flow of the skin can be displayed in vivo and in 3D. This novel angiographic variant of OCT offers the ability to visualize and measure vessel morphology providing a new insight into healthy, inflammatory and neoplastic skin lesions such as malignant melanoma. This review focuses on the possibilities of using D-OCT on healthy and diseased skin. We suggest and illustrate key diagnostic characteristics by analyzing the initial publications and preliminary unpublished data on vessel morphology and distribution. The potential of D-OCT as a diagnostic tool in dermatology is examined and may give rise to future studies on D-OCT, which are needed to confirm the aforementioned features.

Improved detection of human papillomavirus harbored in healthy skin with FAP6085/64 primers

FAP59/64, FAP6085/6319, and CUT primer sets were designed for detecting cutaneous HPV and have been used in many clinical and epidemiology studies. The FAP6085/64 primer set was first evaluated in this study and the FAP6085/64 combination was found to be much more sensitive than all three original primer sets by using HPV plasmids as a template. To confirm further the effectiveness of the FAP6085/64 primer set in human DNA templates, 90 palmar exfoliated cell DNA samples were used to detect the cutaneous HPV by both the FAP59/64 and FAP6085/64 primer sets. The overall proportion of HPV detection in those skin samples was 77.8% (70/90) using FAP6085/64, as compared to 55.6% (50/90) using FAP59/64. The FAP6085/64 primer set was also applied in a population based study. The proportion of HPV detection was 73.96% (2076/2807) in skin samples collected from healthy individuals, and a total of 336 different PV types were found. Sixty (17.9%) of them were fully characterized HPV types, 127 (37.8%) were putative HPV types which had been described previously, 149 (44.3%) were novel putative HPV types, and two animal PVs were also detected. These results suggest that the FAP6085/64 primer set was sensitive and effective for detection of cutaneous HPV in healthy skin samples.