title: Comparison of thermal infrared and laser doppler imaging in the assessment of cutaneous tissue perfusion in scleroderma patients and healthy controls.
abstract: In this study we propose a non-invasive method to calculate blood flow by means of thermal infrared imaging and bio-heat transfer modeling. The method is able to provide high time-resolution series of cutaneous blood flow images with the same spatial resolution of the thermal images. The method was tested against a standard laser Doppler imaging system, which to date is considered the gold standard for non-invasive assessment of cutaneous blood flow, on both healthy subjects and patients suffering from systemic sclerosis (SSc; a pathological condition with microvessel endothelium injury). Twenty healthy subjects and twenty SSc patients simultaneously underwent laser Doppler and thermal imaging of the dorsum of the hand. A linear correlation between perfusion values obtained with the two methods was found for the healthy control group (R = 0.85, Pearson Product Moment Correlation). A significant correlation was not observed for the SSc patient group. The results of this study suggest that combined laser Doppler, thermal imaging and bio-heat transfer modeling could effectively discriminate between healthy vs. impaired conditions of the cutaneous tissue thermal properties and cutaneous vasculature. Such method, in addition to providing a potential effective imaging-based tool for a variety of biomedical and clinical applications ranging from diagnostics to treatment follow-up, may help the understanding of the morphological and functional impairment secondary to the disease. The thermal imaging-based method provided faster and better time-resolved imaging of cutaneous perfusion than standard laser Doppler techniques as the thermal cameras can provide up to 100 complete 524 x 524 pixel images per second, thus allowing real time monitoring of tissue perfusion rates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Sciences and Bioimaging, G. d'Annunzio University, Chieti, Italy. a.merla@itab.unich.it
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Merla
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Di Donato
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Romani
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Proietti
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Salsano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007259:Infrared Rays; D017078:Laser-Doppler Flowmetry / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012039:Regional Blood Flow; D012595:Scleroderma, Systemic / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012867:Skin / Q000098:blood supply*