Abstract
Cutaneous radiation injury (CRI) is a skin injury caused by exposure to high dose ionizing radiation (IR). Diagnosis and treatment of CRI is difficult due to its initial clinically latent period and the following inflammatory bursts. Early detection of CRI before clinical symptoms will be helpful for effective treatment, and various optical methods have been applied with limitations. Here we show that optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) could detect changes in the skin during the latent period in CRI mouse models non-invasively. CRI was induced on the mouse hindlimb with exposure to various IR doses and the injured skin regions were imaged longitudinally by OCTA until the onset of clinical symptoms. OCTA detected several changes in the skin including the skin thickening, the dilation of large blood vessels, and the irregularity in vessel boundaries. Some of OCTA findings were confirmed by histology. The study results showed that OCTA could be used for early CRI detection.
Highlights
Cutaneous radiation injury (CRI) is an injury to the skin and underlying tissues caused by exposure to high dose ionizing radiation (IR) [1]
The clinically latent period in both the 20 Gy and 40 Gy mouse models was considered until day 6 post-irradiation, because the clinical symptoms appeared on day 8
optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) was used to characterize structural and vascular changes caused by CRI in an in-vivo mouse model as a potential early detection method
Summary
Cutaneous radiation injury (CRI) is an injury to the skin and underlying tissues caused by exposure to high dose ionizing radiation (IR) [1]. CRI has a specific characteristic of the delayed onset of clinical symptoms post-irradiation, and the asymptomatic period is called the latent period [1,5,6,7]. The symptoms of CRI become visible after the latent period, and these include erythema, edema, pigment changes, dry and moist desquamation, ulceration, and necrosis depending on the severity [8]. There is no effective preventive measure or treatment of CRI currently available, except for conventional conservative managements [9]. Diagnosis and treatment based on visible clinical symptoms would be late due to the successive and unpredictable inflammatory bursts. Management of CRI would be beneficial to minimize the expansion of injured areas and to increase the treatment efficacy. Non-invasive early diagnosis of CRI would be important
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