A preliminary study of post-progressive nail-art effects on in vivo nail plate using optical coherence tomography-based intensity profiling assessment

Sm Abu Saleah,Pilun Kim,Daewoon Seong,Mansik Jeon,Ruchire Eranga Wijesinghe,Jeehyun Kim

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-79497-3

Sm Abu Saleah, Pilun Kim + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79497-3

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Abstract

Nail beautification is a widely applied gender independent practice. Excessive nail beautifications and nail-arts have a direct impact on the nail structure and can cause nail disorders. Therefore, the assessment of post-progressive nail-art effects on the nail is essential to maintain optimal nail health and to avoid any undesirable disorders. In this study, in vivo nails were examined in control stage, with a nail-art stage, and after removing the nail-art stage using a 1310 nm spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system. The acquired cross-sectional OCT images were analyzed by a laboratory customized signal processing algorithm to obtain scattered intensity profiling assessments that could reveal the effects of nail beautification on the nail plate. The formation and progression of cracks on the nail plate surface were detected as an effect of nail beautification after 72 h of nail-art removal. Changes in backscattered light intensity and nail plate thickness of control and art-removed nails were quantitatively compared. The results revealed the potential feasibility of the developed OCT-based inspection procedure to diagnose post-progressive nail-art effects on in vivo nail plate, which can be helpful to prevent nail plate damages during art removal through real-time monitoring of the boundary between the nail plate and nail-art. Besides nail-art effects, the developed method can also be used for the investigation of nail plate abnormalities by examining the inconsistency of internal and external nail plate structure, which can be diagnosed with both qualitative and quantitative assessments from a clinical perspective.

Highlights

Nail beautification is a widely applied gender independent practice
The over-practice of nail beautification can result in various side effects, such as thinning nail plate, discoloration, drying, brittleness, distal onycholysis, crack on the nail plate, fungal nail infection[2,3,4,5,6,7] and these can turn into fatal nail diseases
The capabilities of the OCT technique were demonstrated in detecting subclinical nail involvement in some psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA)[44,45,46,47], the sensitivity (44.4) and specificity (95.8%) of OCT were calculated for nail d isease[46]

Summary

Introduction

Nail beautification is a widely applied gender independent practice. Excessive nail beautifications and nail-arts have a direct impact on the nail structure and can cause nail disorders. The formation and progression of cracks on the nail plate surface were detected as an effect of nail beautification after 72 h of nail-art removal. It is important to monitor the fingernails for a long period to detect the gradual discoloration and morphological changes of fingernails for the early diagnosis of post-progressive nail-art effects on fingernails as well as various human diseases. Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) is a non-invasive imaging technique that has been used for the assessment of water loss from the n ail[19] and the diagnosis of nail o nychomycosis[20]. OCT is a non-invasive and non-ionized optical imaging technique that offers high-resolution, cross-sectional imaging of internal microstructure of materials and biological tissue structures by computing the echo time delay and backscattered light intensity. OCT has emerged as a powerful and reliable imaging tool for the assessment of nail disorders in recent decades

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