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Digital analysis yields more reliable and accurate measures of dermal and epidermal thickness in histologically processed specimens compared to traditional methods
Author(s) -
Turin Sergey Y.,
Ledwon Joanna K.,
Bae Hanna,
BuganzaTepole Adrian,
Topczewska Jolanta,
Gosain Arun K.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
experimental dermatology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.108
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1600-0625
pISSN - 0906-6705
DOI - 10.1111/exd.13534
Subject(s) - epidermis (zoology) , dermis , reliability (semiconductor) , biomedical engineering , skin thickness , psoriasis , materials science , image analysis , computer science , dermatology , pathology , digital image , medicine , image processing , anatomy , computer vision , physics , image (mathematics) , power (physics) , quantum mechanics
Changes in the thickness of the dermis and epidermis have been described in the scenario of tissue expansion as well as inflammatory skin processes (psoriasis, contact hypersensitivity and so on). These changes have previously been quantified using ocular micrometers to obtain and then average a limited number of spot measurements, leading to suboptimal accuracy. We describe a rapid method of using freely available ImageJ software to analyze digitized images of fixed skin specimens. By determining the cross‐sectional area and surface length of a skin layer, a simple calculation produces more accurate and reproducible measurements of its thickness compared to historical methods, with excellent inter‐rater reliability.