Study on Dependency of Capillary Blood Flow Velocity on Peripheral Vasodilator using Micro -tomographic Visualization of Doppler Velocity (OCDV)

Abstract

Rheological behavior of interstitial fluid in epidermal and dermal tissue, including blood micro-circulation, can vary skin mechanics in micro scale, i.e. visco-elasticity. Therefore, an in vivo quantitative measurement of capillary blood flow velocity is crucial to clarify their properties. The purpose of this study is to visualize the tomographic flow velocity of red blood cell in capillaries of human epidermal skin using Optical Coherence Doppler Velocigraphy, i.e. OCDV. This is constructed on a high frequency modulated low coherence interferometer, which is based on Hilbert transform and adjacent auto-correlation. In order to confirm the utility of OCDV, the tomographic distribution of capillary blood flow velocity was diagnosed with or without a vasodilator drug. As a result of in vivo applying OCDV to human cheek skins, this can reveal the vasodilation effect as well as the change of the blood flow velocity as an in vivo tomographic imaging.