Abstract
Assessing the metabolic activity of a tissue, whether normal, damaged, aged, or pathologic, is useful for diagnosis and evaluating the effects of drugs. This report describes a handheld optical fiber probe that contacts the skin, applies pressure to blanch the superficial vascular plexus of the skin, then releases the pressure to allow refill of the plexus. The optical probe uses white light spectroscopy to record the time dynamics of blanching and refilling. The magnitude and dynamics of changes in blood content and hemoglobin oxygen saturation yield an estimate of the oxygen consumption rate (OCR) in units of attomoles per cell per second. The average value of OCR on nine forearm sites on five subjects was 10±5 (amol/cell/s). This low-cost, portable, rapid, noninvasive optical probe can characterize the OCR of a skin site to assess the metabolic activity of the epidermis or a superficial lesion.
Highlights
Real-time monitoring of the cellular oxygen consumption rate [OCR, attomoles of O2 per cell per s] can characterize the metabolic activity of a tissue, providing physiological information with clinical relevance
This paper presents an alternate method using a topical optical fiber probe measurement at the skin surface to assess the blood volume and hemoglobin oxygen saturation before, during, and after manually applied pressure to blanch the superficial vascular plexus that provides oxygen to the epidermis
Topical placement of an optical fiber probe on the skin followed the dynamics of blanching by applied pressure refilling upon release of the pressure
Summary
Real-time monitoring of the cellular oxygen consumption rate [OCR, attomoles of O2 per cell per s (amol/cell/s)] can characterize the metabolic activity of a tissue, providing physiological information with clinical relevance. Balu et al.[1] used multiphoton microscopy in vivo to image NADH fluorescence in the epidermis as a proxy for OCR. They reported an OCR of about 0.035 μmoles∕106 cells∕h in keratinocytes in the basal layer, which equals 9.7 amol cell−1 s−1. They reported a nonuniformity of OCR across the epidermal thickness, with more superficial keratinocytes having lower OCR
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