Ultrahigh sensitive optical microangiography for in vivo imaging of microcirculations within human skin tissue beds

In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time that the detailed cutaneous blood flow at capillary level within dermis of human skin can be imaged by optical micro-angiography (OMAG) technique. A novel scanning protocol, i.e. fast B scan mode is used to achieve the capillary flow imaging. We employ a 1310nm system to scan the skin tissue at an imaging rate of 300 frames per second, which requires only similar to 5 sec to complete one 3D imaging of capillary blood flow within skin. The technique is sensitive enough to image the very slow blood flows at similar to 4 mu m/sec. The promising results show a great potential of OMAG's role in the diagnosis, treatment and management of human skin diseases. (c) 2010 Optical Society of America