Background:Psoriasis (Pso) is one of the most common chronic inflammatory skin diseases in Europe. Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is closely associated to Pso whereas the skin manifestation appears usually years before PsA-related symptoms emerge. Up to 30% of Pso patients develop PsA, biomarkers for its early detection are of major importance. In early PsA, changes in synovial vascularisation appear first. Imaging biomarkers for detection of changes in vascularisation might be useful for early detection of musculoskeletal disease. Fluorescence-optical imaging (FOI) is a new method to detect changes in microvascularisation of the hands. Each collected data set of the FOI system contains 360 images representing a time progression of the indocyanine green (ICG) distribution.Objectives:To evaluate a reader-independent assessment method for evaluation of FOI in patients with PsO and PsA.Methods:A prospective study including patients with dermatological confirmed skin PsO was performed. 411 patients were included from German dermatology units without PsA diagnosis but potential risk for its development. Clinical examination (CE) was performed by a qualified rheumatologist. For a reader independent evaluation of the FOI images an objective joint-based scoring method was developed. For this method, the joint areas are defined by image segmentation and scored based on generated heatmaps. To calculate a heatmap indicating conspicuous joints from a data set containing 360 images, each pixel is converted to a time series containing 360 values. From this time series, three independent values (features) are extracted: amplitude, average value and maximal slope. Thus, each pixel is reduced to three different feature values. After the three features are determined for each pixel, k-means clustering is performed on each feature. The numbers of centroids (k) are set to 3, 5, 7 and 9. 12 heatmaps (3 features à 4 ks) are calculated, which results in 12 scores for each joint as well. The clusters are then sorted dependent on their centroid value and coloured accordingly to a predefined heatmap colour palette. To finally score each joint, the pixels in the segmented joint area and their assigned cluster are summed and normalized by the area’s amount of pixels and k.Results:271 of the patients were investigated by the newly developed method and compared with the CE scoring. 6426 joints were labeled as healthy whereas 1162 joints were either labeled as swollen, tender or both. The result over all investigated patients for k = 9 is summed in table 1. It is observable that every average and median healthy value is lower than the corresponding affected value.Table 1.Resulting scores for k = 9 for all 271 patients.Feature Statistic valueAmplitudeMeanSlopeHealthyAffectedHealthyAffectedHealthyAffectedAverage0.5030.5280.4860.5090.3950.414Median0.4960.5320.4820.5050.3890.415Conclusion:FOI is an innovative method that detects early changes in vascularization of the hands. So, this method can be useful in early detection of arthritis especially in risk populations such as PsO patients. The results of the objective scoring method show that a clear distinction between healthy and affected joints is possible with the average scores as well as the median values. However, if the range of the scores is considered, the overlap between healthy and affected is not neglectable. Thus, the current scoring system can be used as an indicator but not as a single classification marker. Nevertheless, the research at hand has shown the expected outcome and motivates further development on the heatmap approach.Disclosure of Interests:Lukas Zerweck: None declared, Ulf Henkemeier: None declared, Phuong-Ha Nguyen: None declared, Tanja Rossmanith Grant/research support from: Janssen, BMS, LEO, Pfizer, Andreas Pippow: None declared, Harald Burkhardt Grant/research support from: Pfizer, Roche, Abbvie, Consultant of: Sanofi, Pfizer, Roche, Abbvie, Boehringer Ingelheim, UCB, Eli Lilly, Chugai, Bristol Myer Scripps, Janssen, and Novartis, Speakers bureau: Sanofi, Pfizer, Roche, Abbvie, Boehringer Ingelheim, UCB, Eli Lilly, Chugai, Bristol Myer Scripps, Janssen, and Novartis, Frank Behrens Grant/research support from: Pfizer, Janssen, Chugai, Celgene, Lilly and Roche, Consultant of: Pfizer, AbbVie, Sanofi, Lilly, Novartis, Genzyme, Boehringer, Janssen, MSD, Celgene, Roche and Chugai, Michaela Köhm Grant/research support from: Pfizer, Janssen, BMS, LEO, Consultant of: BMS, Pfizer, Speakers bureau: Pfizer, BMS, Janssen, Novartis
Diagnostic significance of ultrasound in dermatology