Skin imaging with reflectance confocal microscopy.

Confocal microscopy is a new imaging modality for noninvasive real-time tissue imaging with high resolution and contrast comparable with conventional histology. Application of this technology to skin imaging during the last decade has been an exciting advance in dermatology, allowing a virtual widow into living skin without the need for a conventional biopsy or histologic processing of tissue. High-resolution noninvasive skin imaging with confocal microscopy has potential broad applications in the clinical and research arenas, including differentiating between benign and malignant skin lesions, tumor margin mapping, monitoring response to medical or surgical treatments, and pathophysiologic study of inflammatory processes.