Extracting something from nothing: In vivo imaging of human cutaneous lymphatic vessels using optical coherence tomography

Abstract

We propose a method to image cutaneous lymphatic vessels in vivo with optical coherence tomography (OCT). Our method segments the transparent lymphatic vessels by thresholding the OCT signal after calibration for systematic variations due to the confocal effect and the sensitivity drop-off, and subsequent compensation for light attenuation with depth. We describe the method and present a pilot demonstration on two human burn scar patients undergoing ablative laser fractionation treatment. The results show visualization of the lymphatic vessels (diameter: ∼30–150 μm) separate from the blood microvasculature network.