The objective of this study was to compare optical coherence tomography (OCT) with conventional techniques such as KOH-preparation, culture and histology in the identification of the fungal elements in the nail. A total of 18 patients were examined; 10 with clinically evident onychomycosis in toe nails, two with psoriatic nail lesions, one with nail affection caused by lichen planus and five healthy controls. Serial in vivo OCT analyses of onychomycosis was performed prior to KOH-preparation, culture and punch biopsy of the nail plate for consecutive histology. Fungal elements were detected non-invasively in vivo using OCT in all 10 patients with histologically proven onychomycosis. Fungal elements were detectable as highly scattering elongated structures inside the nail plate, in the middle of the areas of homogeneous decrease in signal intensity. KOH-preparations and culture did reveal a positive result in 5/6 out of 10 patients. In patients with psoriasis, lichen planus as well as in the healthy controls, no fungal infection could be detected by either method used. OCT is a reliable, easy to use, non-invasive and non-destructive method to visualise fungal elements in vivo in onychomycosis, even in cases of false negative KOH-preparation and culture. Furthermore, OCT offers the opportunity to screen several areas of the same nail plate and to detect fungal elements during local or systemic therapy.

Helicopters play an important role during construction and operation of offshore wind farms. Most of the time helicopter offshore operations are conducted over open water and often in degraded visual environment. Such scenarios provide very few usable visual cues for the crew to safely pilot the aircraft. For instance, no landmarks exist for navigation and orientation is hindered by weather phenomena that reduce visibility and obscure the horizon. To overcome this problem, we are developing an external vision system which uses a non-see-through, head-worn display (HWD) to show fused sensor and database information about the surroundings. This paper focuses on one aspect of our system: the computer-generated representation of relevant visual cues of the water surface. Our motivation is to develop a synthetic view of the surroundings that is superior to the real out-the-window view. The moving water surface does not provide fixed references for orientation and sometimes even produces wrong motion cues. Thus, we replace it by a more valuable, computer-generated clear view. Since pilots estimate wind direction and speed by checking the movement characteristics of the water surface, our synthetic display also integrates this information. This paper presents several options for a synthetic vision display supporting offshore operations. Further, it comprises results from simulator trials, where helicopter pilots performed final approaches and landings on an offshore platform supported by our display. The results will contribute to the advancement of our HWD-based virtual cockpit concept. Additionally, our findings may be relevant to conventional, head-down synthetic vision displays visualizing offshore environments.