Overview of cutaneous head and neck cancer using dynamic optical contrast imaging

Identifying margins in cutaneous head and neck malignancies is vital to reducing risk of recurrence and morbidity in patients. Dynamic Optical Contrast Imaging (DOCI) is a novel, noninvasive imaging modality that utilizes fluorescence lifetime information to differentiate between healthy and malignant tissue in real-time. This study evaluates the ability of DOCI to discriminate between malignant cutaneous lesions and adjacent healthy skin in the head and neck. Lesions from 49 patients undergoing surgical excision of biopsy confirmed cutaneous malignancies were intraoperatively imaged with DOCI prior to surgical excision. Quantitative DOCI values of the malignant lesion as well as adjacent healthy margins were correlated with histopathology. DOCI was able to successfully distinguish malignant lesions from healthy tissue for multiple subtypes of cutaneous cancers including squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), melanoma, and basal cell carcinoma (BCC). These preliminary findings support the use of DOCI as a promising tool for intraoperative margin assessment of cutaneous malignancies.