Use of Photographs in Dermatology

Photographs have always been an essential part of dermatology due to the visible nature of skin diseases. The first photographic atlas in dermatology was created in 1868 and since then photographs has been an integrated part of dermatology and thousands of archives of clinical photographs have been created through the years. Photographs are an important part of everyday clinical practice and used in referral pathways, documentation, conferring among doctors, follow-up regimes, and remote consultations with patients using email or video consultations to record disease progression, assess severity, or effect of treatment. Dermatology relies on visual pattern recognition, and as photographs provide objective, reproducible documentation of skin disease it is also essential in teaching medical students, research, and publication. Teledermatology, remote monitoring, e-health and digital dermatology are expanding and increasingly used to assess and manage many skin diseases. Severity assessment based on photographs is also important for clinical trials enabling accurate and consecutive monitoring of disease severity and therapy response remotely. During the past two decades, dermatologic publishing has further evolved to include entire journals focused on images, teledermatology, and technology-driven approaches.In this Research Topic we will investigate the use of photographs of skin conditions from different angles:- Teledermatology - Remote assessment of skin diseases - Use of photographs in clinical settings - Machine learning tool/artificial intelligence build upon photographs - Use of photographs to close monitoring in clinical research studies Topic editors: Zarqa Ali, Claudio Marasca, George Kroumpouzos Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78197/use-of-photographs-in-dermatology