A preliminary study of the contribution of telemicroscopy to the diagnosis and management of skin tumours in teledermatology. (June 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Şenel, Engin; Sabancılar, Emine; Mansuroğlu, Cem; Demir, Emre
• Is Part Of: Journal of telemedicine and telecare. Volume 20:Number 4(2014)
• Page Start: 178
• Page End: 183
• Publication Date: 2014-06
• Subjects: Telecommunication in medicine -- Periodicals; 610
• DOI: 10.1177/1357633X14533885
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1357-633X

Abstract

Dermatology images can be acquired using a miniature handheld digital microscope at magnifications of 10- to 30-fold. We investigated the contribution of telemicroscopy to the reliability and accuracy of teledermatology for skin tumours. In a retrospective study of the reliability of diagnosis and management plans, two dermatologists compared teledermatology with face-to-face assessment. We also measured the accuracy of diagnosis by comparing teledermatology with histopathological examination. Two dermatologists evaluated the clinical images and information for 120 randomly sorted cases and recorded a diagnosis and a management plan for each case. Two months later, the same dermatologists re-evaluated the cases and suggested a new diagnosis and management plan for each case. The reliability of teledermatology diagnosis was not significantly different from face-to-face examination; it was significantly increased with the addition of microscopic images ( P < 0.001). The reliability of teledermatology management plans was not significantly different from face-to-face examination; it was significantly increased with the addition of the microscopic images ( P < 0.001). The accuracy of teledermatology was significantly increased with microscopic images ( P = 0.05). Telemicroscopy appears to be a useful adjunct to teledermatology with a digital camera. Future studies with different magnifications should be performed to detect the optimum magnification for telemicroscopy.