Technological bases for teledermatopathology: state of the art.

Teledermatopathology can be defined as a telemedicine application related to histological diagnosis of cutaneous specimens. Its development and implementation around the world is very heterogeneous due to the wide range of existing geographical, social and healthcare conditions. This paper reviews the technological bases for static (use of images generated at one side, stored on a computer, and then transmitted to another site for a second diagnosis) and dynamic teledermatopathology (interaction between an user located on a remote area and a histological video image captured from a microscopy which allows navigation across the slide) as well as for virtual microscopy. The use of teledematopathology could increase the healthcare standard and the accessibility to the health care system in developing countries. However, some limitations related to economic, medico-legal and technical issues still remain, particularly when dealing with inflammatory skin diseases.