Abstract
Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) is a label-free, safe, inexpensive, and quantitative imaging modality that provides metabolic and molecular contrast in tissue using visible or near-infrared light. DOI modalities can image up to several centimeters deep in tissue, providing access to a wide range of human tissues and organ sites. DOI technologies have benefitted from several decades of academic research, which has provided a variety of platforms that prioritize imaging depth, resolution, field-of-view, spectral content, and other application-specific criteria. Until recently, however, acquisition and processing speeds have represented a stubborn barrier to further clinical exploration and implementation. Over the last several years, advances in high-speed data acquisition enabled by high-speed digital electronics, newly available sources and detectors, and innovative new scanning methods have led to major improvements in DOI rates. These advances are now being coupled with new data processing algorithms that utilize deep learning and other computationally efficient methods to provide rapid or real-time feedback in the clinic. Together, these improvements have the potential to help advance DOI technologies to the point where major impacts can be made in clinical care. Here, we review recent advances in acquisition and processing speed for several important DOI modalities.
Highlights
Photon-tissue interactions lay at the core of most medical imaging modalities
Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) instruments fall into three main categories: Continuous Wave (CW), Time Domain (TD), and Frequency Domain (FD)
We review four different commonly utilized technologies here: Time Domain Diffuse Optical Imaging (TD-DOI), Frequency Domain Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy (FD-DOS), Diffuse Optical Topography/Tomography (DOT), and Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging (SFDI)
Summary
Photon-tissue interactions lay at the core of most medical imaging modalities. High-resolution techniques such as optical microscopy, optical coherence tomography, mammography, and xray computed tomography rely on ballistic or quasi-ballistic photons (i.e., photons that are singularly reflected or transmitted with minimal scattering). High-resolution modalities using lower energy photons have penetration depths limited to just a few millimeters due to optical scattering, which rapidly degrades the image resolution. In contrast to these techniques, Diffuse optical imaging (DOI) makes use of multiply scattered photons, which can interact with tissue up to several centimeters below the surface.. Recently have major improvements in both acquisition and processing speed made clear the possibility of rapid or real-time DOI feedback. These improvements have the potential to bring metabolic and molecular information directly and immediately to the treating physician. Faster acquisition and processing of DOI data would make it possible to image larger volumes of tissue at higher speeds to uncover subtleties of hemodynamic regulation in disordered tissues such as tumors as well as highly regulated tissues such as the brain
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