In vivo dual-modality photoacoustic and optical coherence tomography imaging of human dermatological pathologies

Abstract

Vascular abnormalities serve as a key indicator for many skin diseases. Currently available methods in dermatology such as histopathology and dermatoscopy analyze underlying vasculature in human skin but are either invasive, time-consuming, and laborious or incapable of providing 3D images. In this work, we applied for the first time dualmodality photoacoustic and optical coherence tomography that provides complementary information about tissue morphology and vasculature of patients with different types of dermatitis. Its noninvasiveness and relatively short imaging time and the wide range of diseases that it can detect prove the merits of the dual-modality imaging system and show the great potential of its clinical use in the future.

Combined multi-modal photoacoustic tomography, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT angiography system with an articulated probe for in vivo human skin structure and vasculature imaging

“…1(b) (Solid Edge ST6, Siemens Industry Software GmbH, Germany). Compared to other all optical PAT/OCT systems' configurations [16,18], this newly designed probe has all degrees of freedom to be positioned pertaining to the regions being imaged. The switchable sensor holder slides in and out of the slot easily, permitting fast removing and changing of sensor holder to allow OCT a clear scanning window without FPI.…”

“…Another optical imaging method, namely photoacoustic tomography (PAT), has been proven valuable to extract vasculature in humans. Various vessel patterns in both healthy and pathological palmar skin in human are demonstrated by PAT imaging [16]. Its penetration depth exceeds 5 mm, visualizing well the superficial vascular plexus and the reticular dermal plexus with even a hint of the deep dermal plexus.…”

“…Instead of using piezoelectric detectors for PAT, all optical PAT has been demonstrated to achieve satisfactory results when combined with either spectral domain OCT (SD-OCT) or swept source OCT (SS-OCT) [17]. Both preclinical results for in toto chick embryo imaging [18] and clinical skin disease imaging [16] have been shown, proving its usefulness in biomedical imaging. So far, however, in these dual modality PAT/OCT systems, the OCT part is only used to provide 1 to 2 mm of scattering based surface structural detail.…”

Visualization of vasculature using a hand-held photoacoustic probe: phantom and in vivo validation

“…5 Visualization of superficial microvasculature and sensitive assessment of blood volume dynamics is hypothesized to be of added value in several pathologies with cutaneous involvement, such as systemic sclerosis and dermatomyositis. [6][7][8] Imaging of superficial tissue is an appealing application for PA because only a limited imaging depth is required. 2 Several groups have shown how PA imaging, in different implementations and combined with other modalities, can be used to assess (sub) dermal vascular geometry and functioning in vivo.…”

“…The system is capable of imaging vasculature with high sensitivity and spatial resolution (<100 μm) but also at depths of several millimeters. 15 Recently, Zabihian et al 8 used this interferometric concept in combination with optical coherence tomography to visualize vascular abnormalities and skin lesions in relation to several human skin pathologies. The mechanical scanning of the image area with these microscopy setups results in scanning times in the order of minutes per cm 2 .…”