A system for assessing the functional state of blood flow in the skin surface layers by the speckle structure of multiply scattered optical radiation

Abstract

Assessment of the parameters of skin microcirculation is an urgent and important task of modern medicine in the development of methods for diagnosing diseases of the nervous system. The system for assessing the functional state of blood flow in the skin surface layers in the wavelength range from 400 to 850 nm has been improved based on the use of an extended mathematical model of the propagation of optical radiation in human skin by taking into account additional parameters: optical anisotropy of the skin, diameter and shape of erythrocytes in the dermis layer, blood pressure in the brachial artery in the range from 90/60 to 195/130 mm·Hg, plasma protein concentration in the blood (α1, α2, β1, β2, γ-globulins and fibrinogen, g/l), rheological properties of blood flow with a diameter of blood vessels from 4.5 to 500 microns in the skin surface layers, skin temperature from +35 to +41 °C. The developed system makes it possible to determine the severity of microhemodynamic shifts in relation to metabolic disorders, improve diagnosis and evaluate the treatment efficacy of a number of neurological disorders; it also made it possible to reduce the patient examination time and increase the accuracy of measuring the blood flow microcirculation parameters by 10 % (linear and volumetric blood flow velocities) to detect blood flow disturbances in the surface layers of the skin in the normal and abnormal condition of the nervous system.