Enhanced Thermal Imaging (ETI) is a new thermal infrared (8-10 μm) imaging technique that delineates blood vessels embedded in water-rich tissue in real time. ETI uses selective heating of blood via illumination with a green (532 nm) LED to produce a thermal contrast (∼ 0.5°C) between blood vessels and surrounding water-rich tissue. The warmer blood vessels appear brighter in the thermal image. In a previous study, the growth of breast cancer tumors in an 4T1 murine orthotopic model was successfully monitored in vivo using ETI. The images highlighted regions that are routinely targeted for surgical excision around solid mass tumors. Recently, improvements to the acquisition software have enabled real-time imaging with this technique, highlighting ETI’s potential use as an intraoperative imaging tool. In this study, simulations of direct illumination and heating of the blood vessels embedded in tissue were conducted to understand the effects of LED power and vessel depth on the ability of ETI to detect vascular structures. The simulations were performed with an open-source MATLAB integrated solver, MCmatlab.
|