Optical-visualized photoacoustic tomographic navigation

The current preoperative vascular imaging methods cannot achieve noninvasive high-resolution imaging of deep-localized vessels. Photoacoustic tomography (PAT) can show microvessels with centimeter depth and submillimeter diameter without the use of contrast agents. Combined with PAT and optical projection technology, the Hessian-matrix-based skin removal algorithm and the target matching method were developed to spatially align the photoacoustic data of subcutaneous blood vessels with the anatomy of real patients and to realize three-dimensional (3D) visualization of blood vessels from the body surface. The optical projection navigation system based on PAT has high spatial resolution (similar to 135 mu m) and temporal resolution (0.1 s). In the rabbit injection experiment, 3D distributions of needle and blood vessel (> 100 mu m) were obtained by image segmentation, which proved that the method can guide micro plastic injection. Furthermore, healthy volunteers' forehead imaging experiments show that 3D visualization and cross-sectional images of the human forehead clearly show the vascular network and ability of the system to image submillimeter blood vessels with penetration depth (similar to 10.2 mm). Our work confirms that the method of integrated photoacoustic imaging and optical projection has great potential for noninvasive diagnosis and treatment of clinical blood vessels, opening a path for the application of photonics in medical esthetics.

Automated summary

This study developed a method based on photoacoustic tomography (PAT) and optical projection technology to achieve noninvasive high-resolution three-dimensional visualization of subcutaneous blood vessels. The method was successfully applied in animal experiments and imaging experiments on healthy volunteers, demonstrating its potential for clinical diagnosis and treatment of blood vessels.