Key Laboratory of OptoElectronic Science and Technology for Medicine of Education, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Photonics Technology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, PR China; School of Information Science and Engineering, Fujian University of Technology, Fuzhou, 350118, PR China.
Key Laboratory of OptoElectronic Science and Technology for Medicine of Education, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Photonics Technology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, PR China.
Photodiagnosis Photodyn Ther. 2020 Dec;32:102005. doi: 10.1016/j.pdpdt.2020.102005. Epub 2020 Sep 20.
Light penetration in deeper tissue is impeded by the skin scattering properties, which significantly limits the clinical applications of light in medical diagnosis and therapy. To overcome this problem, skin optical clearing methods using different optical clearing agents (OCAs) have been extensively developed to clear the dermis tissue. It is critically important to remove the outmost stratum corneum (SC) before the OCAs were applied for optical clearing, since the SC works as a natural barrier to the OCAs. For this, a controllable approach for the SC disruption through physical or chemical methods is highly required for enhanced skin optical clearing.
Salicylic acid (SA) was combined with OCAs as a rapid skin optical clearing method to create a transparent window within 5 min. The clearing efficacy of this method was demonstrated by using dorsal skin model of mice. In addition, the intensity variations of vessel gray images and diffuse reflectance (DR) spectra were used to quantify the optical clearing efficacy, which were acquired by a low-cost self-built white light imaging system and optical fiber spectrometer, respectively.
Within a specific action time of the OCAs to the skin tissue, the enhanced images of the deeper blood vessels were obtained through the removal of the SC. It takes 5 min for the skin to turn transparent and 15 min to visualize the microvascular morphology for naked eyes. Furthermore, the intensity of blood vessel gray images was identified to be an evaluation parameter for quantifying the optical clearing efficacy.
An efficient and easy-to-handle method for enhanced skin optical clearing was established by combining SA with OCAs, which could boost the clinical applications of light in medical diagnosis and therapy.
皮肤的散射特性阻碍了光在深层组织中的穿透，这极大地限制了光在医学诊断和治疗中的临床应用。为了克服这个问题，已经广泛开发了使用不同光学透明剂（OCA）的皮肤光学透明化方法来清除真皮组织。在应用 OCA 进行光学透明化之前，去除最外层的角质层（SC）是至关重要的，因为 SC 是 OCA 的天然屏障。为此，需要通过物理或化学方法来控制 SC 的破坏，以增强皮肤光学透明化。
将水杨酸（SA）与 OCA 结合作为一种快速皮肤光学透明化方法，在 5 分钟内创建一个透明窗口。通过使用小鼠背部皮肤模型来证明这种方法的透明化效果。此外，血管灰度图像和漫反射（DR）光谱的强度变化分别用于通过低成本自制的白光成像系统和光纤光谱仪来定量评估光学透明化效果。
在 OCA 对皮肤组织的特定作用时间内，通过去除 SC，可以获得更深层血管的增强图像。皮肤需要 5 分钟才能变透明，15 分钟才能用肉眼观察到微血管形态。此外，血管灰度图像的强度被确定为评估光学透明化效果的参数。
通过将 SA 与 OCA 结合，建立了一种高效且易于操作的增强皮肤光学透明化方法，这将推动光在医学诊断和治疗中的临床应用。
