Non-invasive Imaging Techniques for Monitoring Cellular Response to Treatment in Stable Vitiligo

Vitiligo, an immune-mediated melanocyte destruction disorder (Harris, 2018), is often treated with immunomodulators and phototherapy (Bae et al., 2017). Surgical interventions can achieve 45-47% success with >90% repigmentation (Ju et al., 2021) in stable vitiligo but responses are unpredictable (Rajaram M, 2017). Quantifying vitiligo treatment response to grafting is challenging due to the limited sensitivity of the vitiligo area scoring index (VASI) (Gan et al., 2017) (Komen et al., 2015), which can only capture macroscopic changes after 6-12 months (Gao et al., 2022).