Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging(LSCI)plays an important role in studying blood flow,but suffers from limited penetration depth of light in turbid tissue.The strong scattering of tissue obviously reduces the image contrast which decreases the sensitivity to flow velocity.Some image processing or optical clearing methods have been proposed to lessen the deficiency,but quantitative assessment of improvement is seldom given.In this study,LSCI was applied to monitor the blood flow through a capillary embedded within various tissue phantoms at depths of 0.25,0.45,0.65,0.85 and 1.05 mm,and the flow velocity in capillary was controllable from 0 to 4mm/s.Here,glycerol,a common optical clearing agent,was mixed with Intralipid at different volume ratio to make the reduced scattering coefficient of tissue phantom decrease from 13.00 to 0.50 cm−1.The quantitative analysis demonstrates that the optical clearing method can obviously enhance the image contrast,imaging depth,and sensitivity to blood flow velocity.Comparing the Laser Speckle Contrast Analysis methods and the optical clearing method,we find that for typical turbid tissue,the sensitivity to velocity estimated by the Laser Speckle Temporal Contrast Analysis(LSTCA)is twice of that by the Laser Speckle Spatial Contrast Analysis(LSSCA);while the sensitivity to velocity estimated by using the two analysis methods has a 10-fold increase,respectively,if addition of glycerol makes the reduced scattering coefficient of tissue phantom decrease by 30%.Combining the LSTCA and the optical clearing method,the sensitivity to flow velocity will be further enhanced.
Monte Carlo方法已被广泛用于模拟复杂的随机介质如生物组织中光的辐射传输.在生物光子应用中,早期的Monte Carlo模拟模型忽略了光在组织中传输的波动性,而用中性粒子光子包来模拟其传播过程.然而,许多光学诊断技术是基于光在组织中的偏振效应和多重散射的相干性来揭示组织的生理和病理信息,这就要涉及光辐射的波动性.本文阐述了用Monte Carlo方法模拟光在生物组织中传播的最新进展.
A reflection-mode photoacoustic microscope(PAM) for rat brain imaging in vivo is constructed.A pulsed laser is used as an excitation source,and a focused ultrasound transducer is adopted to collect the photoacoustic signal.Raster scanning is applied to acquire three-dimensional(3D) data.The obtained measurements of the lateral and axial resolutions of the microscope are 45 and 15μm,respectively.The imaging depth in the chicken breast tissue is 3.1 mm at a signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) of 20 dB without any signal averaging.The imaging speed is 30 A-line/s.Experimental results in vivo demonstrate the capability of 3D imaging of the brain vessels of the rat after removing the skull.
