In vivo volumetric imaging of microcirculation within human skin under psoriatic conditions using optical microangiography

Background and Objective: There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that vascular abnormalities may play crucial role in several dermatologic diseases, such as psoriasis, port wine stain, and skin cancer. To improve our understanding of vascular involvement in these skin conditions, there is a need for a non-invasive imaging modality capable of assessing 3D microcirculations within skin tissue beds in vivo. This study aims to demonstrate whether ultra-high sensitive optical microangiography (UHS-OMAG)is feasible to visualize skin microcirculations

in 3D and to quantify microvascular vessel density under

normal and psoriatic conditions in vivo.

Study Design/Material and Methods: An UHS-OMAG

system operating at 1,310nm wavelength was used for in

vivo imaging of microcirculation in human skin. The

system has a spatial resolution of 10 mm20 mm (axial lateral), running at 280 fps to acquire3Dimaging dataset to

represent morphology and capillary level microvascular

blood perfusion within the scanned skin tissue volume. The

sensitivity of the system to the blood flow is as low as4 mm/

second. With this system, we performed the imaging

experiments on the skin of a volunteer with stable plaquetype

psoriasis. The microcirculation and structural information

of normal and diseased skins were compared both

qualitatively and quantitatively.

Results: The UHS-OMAG is capable of differentiating the

microcirculation within the normal skins from that in the

psoriatic skins. The 3D optical images show that the blood

vessel elongation and the dense network in the psoriatic

lesion skin, the appearance of which is not observed within

the normal skin. Based on the results obtained from one

subject, the statistical analyses show that higher blood

vessel density presented within the psoriasis lesion skin

than that of the normal skin.

Conclusions: UHS-OMAG can be a valuable tool for

imaging skin microcirculations non-invasively with highspeed

and high-sensitivity, and therefore may have a

useful role in future clinical diagnosis and treatment

of dermatologic diseases such as psoriasis in human

subjects. Lasers Surg. Med. 43:122–129, 2011.

2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.