Optical Coherence-domain Imaging of Subcutaneous Human Blood Vessels in vivo

Experimental methods of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) are applied for two-dimensional mapping of subcutaneous human blood vessels. Structural images of in vivo human finger and human palm macro vessels (0.2-1.0 mm) before and after optical clearing using the modified low power rapid scanning optical delay line are presented. Images are scanned with 12 µm minimum spatial resolution. The described modifications enable to apply low power (0.4-0.5 mW), low noise broadband near infrared light source and to obtain structural images with detection of not only reflected but also multiply scattered coherence-gated photons. The achieved transcutaneous probing depth is about 1.6-1.8 mm.