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Reflectance Confocal Microscopy (RCM)

What happens to my RCM skin images? Where they sent? Where do I get the results? What does it cost? Who will send me a bill?

As the Confocal Microscope images skin non-invasively, it eliminates the pain and scarring associated with traditional biopsy and allows for dynamic evaluation of skin over time.

RCM offers a pain-free way for doctors to examine the superficial layers of your skin at the cellular level. Your doctor may use this information to determine if a skin biopsy can safely be avoided, to diagnose your skin lesion without a surgical biopsy, to assist in managing your skin lesion without surgery (watch and wait, creams, lasers etc.), to choose the best area(s) in a large lesion or rash to surgically biopsy (mapping consultation), and/or to determine where the boundaries of your skin lesion are to help plan your surgery (mapping consultation). Occasionally, your dermatologist may determine that Dr. Gill needs to view the images during acquisition to either help provide an immediate management decision or ensure that the most important areas are imaged.

Sometimes RCM determines that a skin biopsy or excision is needed.  This can happen for a few reasons: 1) cancerous features are identified in the images, 2) the RCM images show features that can be seen in more than one type of lesion, 3) RCM has not identified features that explain the clinical picture, which could imply that the lesion is deeper in the skin and not reachable with RCM or is tricky to diagnose with RCM. 

Your dermatologist images your skin with the reflectance confocal microscope (image acquisition) but may choose to send the images to Dr. Gill for image interpretation. If this occurs, your dermatologist will bill you for imaging acquisition services only and we will bill you separately for Dr. Gill’s image interpretation services. Dr. Gill will send her RCM report to your Dermatologist, who will contact you with the results. RCM is a relatively new field of medicine. Therefore, the procedure is not covered by all insurance plans yet. Please contact your insurance company directly to determine if you plan will pay for this service.