[en] The authors show that the virtual Compton scattering process allows for a precise study of the off-shell electron-nucleon vertex. In a separable model, they show the sensitivity to new unconstrained structure functions of the nucleon, beyond the usual Dirac and Pauli form factors. In addition, they show the sensitivity to bound nucleon form factors using the reaction 4He(rvec e,e',rvec p)³H. A nucleon embedded in a nucleus represents a complex system. Firstly, the bound nucleon is necessarily off-shell and in principle a complete understanding of the dynamical structure of the nucleon is required in order to calculate its off-shell electromagnetic interaction. Secondly, one faces the possibility of genuine medium effects, such as for example quark-exchange contributions. Furthermore, the electromagnetic coupling to the bound nucleon is dependent on the nuclear dynamics through the self-energy of the nucleon in the nuclear medium