Line-field confocal optical coherence tomography (LC-OCT) as a new tool for non-invasive differential diagnosis of pustular skin disorders

Background: The spectrum of pustular skin disorders (PSD) is large and particularly challenging, including inflammatory, infectious and amicrobial diseases. Moreover, although pustules represent the unifying clinical feature, they can be absent or not fully developed in the early stage of the disease. The line-field confocal optical coherence tomography (LC-OCT) is a recently developed imaging technique able to perform a non-invasive, in vivo, examination of the epidermis and upper dermis, reaching very high image resolution and virtual histology. Objectives: We aimed to investigate the potentialities of LC-OCT in the non-invasive differential diagnosis of a series of 11 PSD with different etiology ...