In Vivo Biopsy of the Human Cornea

The human cornea is the transparent, dome-shaped tissue that covers anterior segment of the eye. It consists of five thin layers: epithelium, Bowman’s layer, stroma, Descemet’s membrane and endothelium. Due to its transparency, real-time in vivo confocal microscop‐ ic observation of the normal and diseased cornea was developed since the early 1990s. [1,2] Since histologic-like images are obtained by the device, it is called “painless biopsy” and/or “in vivo biopsy”. In this chapter, clinical application of in vivo laser confocal microscopy is demonstrated.