Optical coherence tomography for complex diagnosis of vulvar diseases

Lichen Sclerosus is a chronic recurrent inflammatory dermatosis of unknown etiology, which affects both the skin and also the mucous membrane and is usually localized at the genital area. OCT angiography is a promising tool for microcirculation mapping in 3D with ~micrometer resolution. During the study, we developed and implemented a robust real time OCT angiography realization for routine clinical practice. This allows clinicians to combine structural OCT imaging with angiograms during routine clinical practice. Normal vulvar mucosa and dystrophic vulvar mucosa were analyzed by multimodal OCT. In the structural OCT scans of connective tissue, lymphatic vessels were visualized as contrast, low-signal regions. The angiographic images of the normal mucosa show dense, uniform network, mostly consisting of relatively thin vessels. Lymphatic vessel network presented by rare, very thick vessels. Further realization of OCT lymphangiography in real-time in parallel with OCT blood-vessel angiography can improve diagnostic capabilities of the multifunctional OCT in real clinical practice.