In vivo label-free lymphangiography of cutaneous lymphatic vessels in human burn scars using optical coherence tomography

Peijun Gong; Shaghayegh Es'haghian; Karl-Anton Harms; Alexandra Murray; Suzanne Rea; Fiona M Wood; David D Sampson; Robert A McLaughlin

doi:10.1364/BOE.7.004886

In vivo label-free lymphangiography of cutaneous lymphatic vessels in human burn scars using optical coherence tomography

Biomed Opt Express. 2016 Nov 2;7(12):4886-4898. doi: 10.1364/BOE.7.004886. eCollection 2016 Dec 1.

Authors

Peijun Gong¹, Shaghayegh Es'haghian¹, Karl-Anton Harms², Alexandra Murray², Suzanne Rea³, Fiona M Wood³, David D Sampson⁴, Robert A McLaughlin⁵

Affiliations

¹ Optical + Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia.
² Burns Service of Western Australia, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, WA 6000, Australia.
³ Burns Service of Western Australia, Fiona Stanley Hospital, Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia; Burn Injury Research Unit, School of Surgery, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia.
⁴ Optical + Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia; Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation & Analysis, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia.
⁵ Optical + Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, School of Electrical, Electronic & Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA 6009, Australia; Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics, School of Medicine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.

Abstract

We present an automated, label-free method for lymphangiography of cutaneous lymphatic vessels in humans in vivo using optical coherence tomography (OCT). This method corrects for the variation in OCT signal due to the confocal function and sensitivity fall-off of a spectral-domain OCT system and utilizes a single-scattering model to compensate for A-scan signal attenuation to enable reliable thresholding of lymphatic vessels. A segment-joining algorithm is then incorporated into the method to mitigate partial-volume effects with small vessels. The lymphatic vessel images are augmented with images of the blood vessel network, acquired from the speckle decorrelation with additional weighting to differentiate blood vessels from the observed high decorrelation in lymphatic vessels. We demonstrate the method with longitudinal scans of human burn scar patients undergoing ablative fractional laser treatment, showing the visualization of the cutaneous lymphatic and blood vessel networks.

Keywords: (100.0100) Image processing; (110.4500) Optical coherence tomography; (170.3880) Medical and biological imaging; (170.4500) Optical coherence tomography.