Optical coherence tomography (OCT) developer Michelson Diagnostics said a recent study has shown its OCT technology has the potential to evaluate psoriatic nail disease.
In preliminary findings published 25 July in Dermatology, researchers from the Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust found that Michelson's VivoSight multibeam images showed much higher resolution changes with prominent thickening in the ventral plate at the nail bed than high-resolution ultrasound.
These images showed the nail bed was grossly inhomogenous, eroded in appearance, and irregularly fused with the underlying epidermis, which correlated with the clinical observation of subungual hyperakeratosis, according to the researchers.
Nail disease occurs in 10% to 55% of patients with psoriasis and in 53% to 86% of patients with psoriatic arthritis. As yet, there are no objective methods to diagnose and assess nail disease in these patients, Michelson said.
The Leeds Psoriatic Arthritis Research Group, led by Dr. Dennis McGonagle, also a co-author of the paper, is conducting further studies using the technology. OCT may prove to be superior to ultrasound in this application, according to McGonale and colleagues.
Picture (2A), with corresponding VivoSight OCT (2B) and ultrasound (2C) images of a psoriatic nail. Images courtesy of Michelson Diagnostics.
