A nerve disorder means Mark Farruggia's life is no walk in the park.
 
"Grade school and high school I couldn't run. I couldn't play sports because every time I did, I was tripping," says Farruggia.
 
Mark has an inherited type of peripheral neuropathy, a family of disorders that affects nerves we use constantly.
 
"We have motor nerves that go to our muscles and give them strength. We have sensory nerves that go to our skin," says Neurologist Dr. David Herrmann.
 
Patients with peripheral neuropathy need to know if their disease is progressing.
 
"But a limitation of some of the traditional tests is they have not been able to look at the nerve endings in the skin," says Herrmann.
 
The best test, a skin biopsy, is painful. So Dr. Herrmann and his colleagues are working on a non-invasive way to examine the nerves.
 
"One technique that we've been looking at is called in vivo confocal reflectance microscopy," says Herrmann.
 
The microscope is connected to the hand or foot. Then a low-level laser beam helps reveal the extent of nerve damage in the skin's touch receptors.
 
"Understanding their density or the number of them in the skin and their health is potentially useful to identify and detect peripheral neuropathy and monitor it over time," says Herrmann.
 
This type of imaging could identify new neuropathy patients and help existing ones.
 
"That will allow us to monitor nerve disease more efficiently, painlessly and rapidly over time," says Herrmann.
 
Giving patients, like Mark, an up close and personal view of their nerves. The technique has to undergo further testing before it's used as a diagnostic or tracking tool.