Implementazione della diagnostica non invasiva a supporto della pratica clinica

The use of tools, intended broadly as all those objects through which we can interact with the environment and modify it, is part of our daily experience. For example, when we use a smartphone to buy a train ticket we are in fact acting on the environment, causing tangible consequences through a tool. In the human species, the use of tools is the result of a complex cognitive process, which requires mentally representing the possibility of achieving a goal in a mediated, rather than direct, manner. The link between tools and the development of the human species is central. By studying the tools that the different hominids have been able to produce and use, paleoanthropologists have always tried to characterize the evolutionary steps which led to the origin of our species and our cognitive abilities. Over time, these first tools take on more and more elaborate shapes, and the brain, in turn, follows an evolutionary path that leads to a considerable increase in size. In fact, for this particular interaction, we can speak of a process of co-evolution. By examining the history of medicine at the same time, it is clear that the evolution of the latter also goes hand in hand with technological progress and consequently with the instruments supporting it. New technologies have in fact transformed medicine and the imminent advent of artificial intelligence will be the element capable of upsetting and giving it an unprecedented evolutionary drive, effectively providing the link between tangible and abstract tools. In Dermatology, non-invasive diagnostic techniques refer to a group of in-vivo methods that go hand in hand with the clinical evaluation of the patient and that use high-tech equipment for the study and diagnosis of skin diseases, both of an inflammatory and neoplastic nature. This thesis examines some of the most modern and innovative diagnostic equipment in Dermatology, in order to show their potential and benefits in the delicate and fundamental "diagnostic moment" and in the validation of the results obtained from laboratory studies in clinical applications, a typical example of translational research.