Toward noninvasive assessment of flap viability with time-resolved diffuse optical tomography: a preclinical test on rats

J Biomed Opt. 2016 Feb;21(2):25004. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.21.2.025004.

Abstract

The noninvasive assessment of flap viability in autologous reconstruction surgery is still an unmet clinical need. To cope with this problem, we developed a proof-of-principle fully automatized setup for fast time-gated diffuse optical tomography exploiting Mellin-Laplace transform to obtain three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin concentrations. We applied this method to perform preclinical tests on rats inducing total venous occlusion in the cutaneous abdominal flaps. Notwithstanding the use of just four source-detector couples, we could detect a spatially localized increase of deoxyhemoglobin following the occlusion (up to 550 μM in 54 min). Such capability to image spatio-temporal evolution of blood perfusion is a key issue for the noninvasive monitoring of flap viability.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Female
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Rats
  • Rats, Wistar
  • Surgical Flaps / physiology*
  • Tomography, Optical / methods*