Abstract

Due to significant advantages, the trend in the field of medical technology is moving towards minimally or even non-invasive examination methods. In this respect, optical methods offer inherent benefits, as does diffuse reflectance imaging (DRI). The present study attempts to prove the suitability of DRI—when implemented alongside a suitable setup and data evaluation algorithm—to derive information from anatomically correctly scaled human capillaries (diameter: 10,upmu hbox {m}, length: 45,upmu hbox {m}) by conducting extensive Monte–Carlo simulations and by verifying the findings through laboratory experiments. As a result, the method of shifted position-diffuse reflectance imaging (SP-DRI) is established by which average signal modulations of up to 5% could be generated with an illumination wavelength of lambda =424,hbox {nm} and a core diameter of the illumination fiber of 50,upmu hbox {m}. No reference image is needed for this technique. The present study reveals that the diffuse reflectance data in combination with the SP-DRI normalization are suitable to localize human capillaries within turbid media.

Highlights

  • Due to significant advantages, the trend in the field of medical technology is moving towards minimally or even non-invasive examination methods

  • It is essential to emphasize that this was possible with only one single wavelength and a core diameter ∅Core = 50 μm of the illumination fiber

  • The normalization method of SP-diffuse reflectance imaging (DRI), which enabled this imaging and which was applied for the first time in this study in the DRI context, proved to be a suitable technique to obtain the corresponding information from the detector raw data

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Summary

Introduction

The trend in the field of medical technology is moving towards minimally or even non-invasive examination methods In this respect, optical methods offer inherent benefits, as does diffuse reflectance imaging (DRI). Due to relevant advantages such as the reduction of pain for the patient, the shortening of wound healing periods and the minimization of iatrogenic damages, invasive procedures are progressively replaced by minimally invasive or even non-invasive techniques wherever feasible. For example, the differentiation of cancerous and healthy tissue is possible by means of optical measures What these techniques have in common is that they draw conclusions about the physiological state of the sample under investigation by exploiting its optical properties. One way of determining the optical properties of biological tissue is diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS)[2]. By selecting a certain illumination wavelength, it is possible to determine the tissue depth to be i­nvestigated[6,7,8], which in turn equals the adjustment of the axial resolution of the system

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