Open AccessSystematic study of the effect of ultrasound gel on the performances of time-domain diffuse optics and diffuse correlation spectroscopy
Author(s) -
Laura Di Sieno,
Davide Contini,
Giuseppe Lo Presti,
Lorenzo Cortese,
Tony Matéo,
Bogdan Rosinski,
Elena Venturini,
Pietro Panizza,
Mireia Mora,
Gloria Aranda,
Mattia Squarcia,
Andrea Farina,
Turgut Durdurán,
Paola Taroni,
Antonio Pifferi,
Alberto Dalla Mora
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.10.003899
Subject(s) - diffuse optical imaging , diffuse reflectance infrared fourier transform , optics , spectroscopy , materials science , ultrasound , diffuse reflection , fluorescence correlation spectroscopy , photon diffusion , attenuation coefficient , optical phenomena , image resolution , diffusion , absorption (acoustics) , nuclear magnetic resonance , chemistry , physics , tomography , fluorescence , light source , biochemistry , photocatalysis , quantum mechanics , thermodynamics , catalysis , acoustics
Recently, multimodal imaging has gained an increasing interest in medical applications thanks to the inherent combination of strengths of the different techniques. For example, diffuse optics is used to probe both the composition and the microstructure of highly diffusive media down to a depth of few centimeters, but its spatial resolution is intrinsically low. On the other hand, ultrasound imaging exhibits the higher spatial resolution of morphological imaging, but without providing solid constitutional information. Thus, the combination of diffuse optical imaging and ultrasound may improve the effectiveness of medical examinations, e.g. for screening or diagnosis of tumors. However, the presence of an ultrasound coupling gel between probe and tissue can impair diffuse optical measurements like diffuse optical spectroscopy and diffuse correlation spectroscopy, since it may provide a direct path for photons between source and detector. A systematic study on the effect of different ultrasound coupling fluids was performed on tissue-mimicking phantoms, confirming that a water-clear gel can produce detrimental effects on optical measurements when recovering absorption/reduced scattering coefficients from time-domain spectroscopy acquisitions as well as particle Brownian diffusion coefficient from diffuse correlation spectroscopy ones. On the other hand, we show the suitability for optical measurements of other types of diffusive fluids, also compatible with ultrasound imaging.