title: Optical coherence tomography angiography offers comprehensive evaluation of skin optical clearing in vivo by quantifying optical properties and blood flow imaging simultaneously.
abstract: Tissue optical clearing (TOC) is helpful for reducing scattering and enhancing the penetration depth of light, and shows promising potential in optimizing optical imaging performances. A mixture of fructose with PEG-400 and thiazone (FPT) is used as an optical clearing agent in mouse dorsal skin and evaluated with OCT angiography (Angio-OCT) by quantifying optical properties and blood flow imaging simultaneously. It is observed that FPT leads to an improved imaging performance for the deeper tissues. The imaging performance improvement is most likely caused by the FPT-induced dehydration of skin, and the reduction of scattering coefficient (more than ∼ 40.5%) and refractive-index mismatching (more than ∼ 25.3%) in the superficial (epidermal, dermal, and hypodermal) layers. A high correlation (up to ∼ 90%) between the relative changes in refractive-index mismatching and Angio-OCT signal strength is measured. The optical clearing rate is ∼ 5.83 × 10(-5) cm/s. In addition, Angio-OCT demonstrates enhanced performance in imaging cutaneous hemodynamics with satisfactory spatiotemporal resolution and contrast when combined with TOC, which exhibits a powerful practical application in studying microcirculation.
authors.affiliation: Zhejiang University, College of Optical Science and Engineering, State Key Lab of Modern Optical Instrumentation, 38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, 1037 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, ChinacHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedic.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, 1037 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, ChinacHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedic.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, 1037 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, ChinacHuazhong University of Science and Technology, Department of Biomedic.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Zhejiang University, College of Optical Science and Engineering, State Key Lab of Modern Optical Instrumentation, 38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China.
authors.forename: Zhihua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Zhejiang University, College of Optical Science and Engineering, State Key Lab of Modern Optical Instrumentation, 38 Zheda Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310027, China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000792:Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D000818:Animals; D003879:Dermatologic Agents; D005632:Fructose; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; D012039:Regional Blood Flow / Q000502:physiology*; D012867:Skin / Q000098:blood supply*; D013829:Thiadiazines; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D003879:Dermatologic Agents; D013829:Thiadiazines; D005632:Fructose; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; C000595213:polyethylene glycol 400; C012864:dazomet