An international team of scientists, led by Igor Meglinski and Vladislav Yakovlev, has developed a computer model for assessing tissue transmission spectra that aims to improve optical diagnostics and laser surgery. The team also believes it can play a vital role in the successful deployment of facial recognition security systems.
The recent emergence of in vivo optical imaging probes holds out the promise of rapid, inexpensive, and non-invasive medical screening and diagnostics for a wide range of diseases. These advances in optical spectroscopic characterisation are also critical for the success of laser surgery where it is essential to know exactly the laser fluence delivered to a specific organ and the optimal laser excitation conditions for maximum tissue probing depth.
To build and verify the computer model, Georgi Petrov of the BME Department at Texas A&M University measured transmission rates for different parts of the human body in the 500 to 950nm spectral range, using an Andor iDus deep depletion CCD camera. ‘We needed high sensitivity, both in the VIS and NIR regions, and a deep depletion CCD to avoid all the etalonning effects that would affect our measurements. We chose Andor's iDus-401 BR-DD because it offered high quantum efficiency in the near infrared with zero etalonning combined with a high dynamic range and good detector linearity.’
Antoine Varagnat, product specialist at Andor, said: ‘The work of Meglinski and Yakovlev, in discovering a way to model the functional properties of human skin and other tissues, opens up new ways to identify optimal conditions for optical diagnostics. Similarly, modelling optical variations associated with physiological changes, such as blood oxygenation, holds out the hope of novel, non-invasive techniques to monitor patients 24/7, especially those in intensive care.’
