7th Annual Workshop on Confocal Microscopy for Cutaneous Diagnostics - Project Summary Skin cancers are the most common cancers in the U.S and often require biopsy for histopathology confirmation. However, ~70% of biopsies yield benign findings, representing an unnecessary healthcare burden. Biopsies are also invasive and associated with complications such as bleeding, infections, and scars, and histopathologic analysis is time-consuming, delaying treatment. Confocal microscopy (CM) images skin at cellular resolution. Two CM techniques are used to evaluate skin lesions: reflectance CM (RCM), which is performed noninvasively on intact skin, and ex vivo CM (EVCM), which allows rapid imaging of fresh ex vivo tissues without time-consuming tissue processing. RCM has better sensitivity (90–94%) and specificity (82–85%) for skin cancer diagnoses compared with dermoscopy and reduces benign biopsies by ~75%. Likewise, EVCM can detect residual carcinoma in surgical margins with high sensitivity of 96.6%% and specificity of 89.2%. These images are challenging for novices to read, posing a major barrier to their clinical adoption. This is compounded by a lack of experts and teaching resources in this field. To overcome this barrier, we have created a CME-accredited Annual Workshop on Confocal Microscopy for Cutaneous Diagnostics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). While the workshop focuses on CM, we will also familiarize attendees with advances in CM, including multimodal techniques such as full-field optical coherence tomography (FF- OCT), line-field confocal (LC-OCT), and RCM-OCT. The 2024 two-day workshop will be presented in person and virtually. We have gathered a world-renowned faculty with expertise in this field and anticipate global participation based on our previous 6 workshops. The workshop will be interactive, including lectures, hands- on image acquisition, case discussions, and competitive quizzes. R13 funds will be used to provide scholarships to attendees from underrepresented groups, women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities to attend the workshop and undertake an observership at MSK. We will further promote participation by these groups through our marketing and outreach efforts and by ensuring physical and virtual accessibility. The workshop’s learning objectives are to: (a) familiarize with underlying optical principles and associated terminology, (b) recognize features of neoplastic and inflammatory skin lesions, (c) develop skills in acquiring images, (d) understand to integrate CM in clinical and surgical workflows, and (e) gain familiarity and applications of novel multi-modal devices. The overall goal of the workshop is to encourage clinicians, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, to integrate CM and multimodal devices into clinics.
