Real-time imaging of tissue optical properties and surface profile using 3D-SSOP

摘要

Wide-field optical tissue characterization has a large clinical potential that is currently not exploited due to the lack of real-time imaging methods. In this work we propose 3D single shot optical properties imaging (3D-SSOP) a new acquisition and processing method for obtaining surface profile corrected tissue absorption and reduced scattering coefficient maps from a single image. A profile is projected that is sensitive to both optical properties and surface profile. With image processing, the two responses are separated and surface profile corrected tissue optical properties as with profile corrected spatial frequency domain imaging (3D-SFDI). Overall, 3D-SSOP estimates showed a small bias of -1.2% in both μ_a and μ'_s in comparison with 3D-SFDI. Standard deviations on flat surfaces for 3D-SSOP were 7% (μ_a) and 17% (μ'_s) lower than for 3D-SFDI. However, 3D-SSOP showed significant artifacts near edges, where spatial averaging caused inaccuracies in diffuse reflectance estimates, as well as the surface profile. In an in-vivo experiment of a hand optical property estimates were equivalent, but processing artifacts suppressed smaller details with 3D-SSOP. To our knowledge, this method is the first method to estimate surface profile corrected tissue optical properties from a single image. Therefore we expect this method to be an important step in bringing real-time wide-field tissue characterization to the operating room.