Clinical applicability of in vivo fluorescence confocal microscopy for noninvasive diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of nonmelanoma skin cancer.

Excisional biopsies and routine histology remains the gold standard for the histomorphologic evaluation of normal and diseased skin. However, there is increasing interest in the development of noninvasive optical technologies for evaluation, diagnosis, and monitoring of skin disease in vivo. Fluorescent confocal microscopy is an innovative optical technology that has previously been used for morphologic evaluation of live human tissue.