Navigated tracking of skin lesion progression with optical spectroscopy

Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (CTCL) is a cancer type externally characterized by alterations in the coloring of skin. Optical spectroscopy has been proposed for quantification of minimal changes in skin offering itself as an interesting tool for monitoring of CTCL in real-time. However, in order to be used in a valid way, measurements on the lesions have to be taken at the same position and with the same orientation in each session. Combining hand-held optical spectroscopy devices with tracking and acquiring synchronously spectral information with position and orientation, we introduce a novel computer-assisted scheme for valid spectral quantification of disease progression. We further present an implementation for an augmented reality guidance system that allows to find a point previously analyzed with an accuracy of 0.8[mm] and 5.0[deg] (vs. 1.6[mm] and 6.6[deg] without guidance). The intuitive guidance, as well as the preliminary results shows that the presented approach has great potential towards innovative computer-assistance methods for quantification of disease progression.