In the past, in vivo confocal microscopy (CM) was mainly used as a research tool to enable qualitative and quantitative study of the animal and human cornea in vivo. From the early 1990s onwards there has been a plethora of investigations of corneal structures describing findings both in healthy volunteers and in diseased patients. One of the main problems with most of these studies is their relatively low level of evidence; >80% of analysed papers published between 1990 and 2001 were classified by the American Academy of Ophthalmology's Ophthalmic Technology Assessment Committee Cornea Panel as case reports or case series.
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