Toward noninvasive assessment of flap viability with time-resolved diffuse optical tomography: a preclinical test on rats
Abstract
The noninvasive assessment of flap viability in autologous reconstruction surgery is still an unmet clinical need. To cope with this problem, we developed a proof-of-principle fully automatized setup for fast time-gated diffuse optical tomography exploiting Mellin-Laplace transform to obtain three-dimensional tomographic reconstructions of oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin concentrations. We applied this method to perform preclinical tests on rats inducing total venous occlusion in the cutaneous abdominal flaps. Notwithstanding the use of just four source-detector couples, we could detect a spatially localized increase of deoxyhemoglobin following the occlusion (up to 550 μM in 54 min). Such capability to image spatio-temporal evolution of blood perfusion is a key issue for the noninvasive monitoring of flap viability.
References
Pharyngoesophageal reconstruction with the anterolateral thigh flap after total laryngopharyngectomy
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