Synchrotron microimaging technique for measuring the velocity fields of real blood flows

Angiography and Doppler methods used for diagnosing vascular diseases give information on the shape of blood vessels and pointwise blood speed but do not provide detailed information on the flow fields inside the blood vessels. In this study, we developed a method for visualizing blood flow by using coherent synchrotron x rays. This method, which does not require the addition of any contrast agent or tracer particles, visualizes the flow pattern of blood by enhancing the diffraction and interference characteristics of the blood cells. This was achieved by optimizing the sample- (blood) to-detector (charge-coupled device camera) distance and the sample thickness. The proposed method was used to extract quantitative velocity field information from blood flowing inside an opaque microchannel by applying a two-frame particle image velocimetry algorithm to enhanced x-ray images of the blood flow. The measured velocity field data showed a flow structure typical of flow in a macrochannel. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.