Blood flow velocity imaging of malignant melanoma by micro multipoint laser Doppler velocimetry

Abstract

We have developed a laser Doppler velocimeter to measure blood flow, the micromultipoint laser Doppler velocimeter (μ-MLDV). This equipment can measure absolute velocity and, based on this, can display the course of blood vessels. In this study, we attempted to perform blood flow velocity imaging of malignant melanoma transplanted to the mouse ear. We found that blood flow velocity of the formed blood vessels originating in the melanoma was much greater than that of the capillary vessels in normal skin. Furthermore, the form of the tumor was clearly visible from the blood flow velocity image. These experimental results suggest that μ-MLDV has potential as a diagnostic method for distinguishing benign nevi from malignant melanomas.

Dynamic markers based on blood perfusion fluctuations for selecting skin melanocytic lesions for biopsy

“…This is due to very similar appearance of these two kinds of skin lesions; with many atypical nevi failing the initial ABCD test. Unlike previous studies based on LDF 13 14 15 25 , which took into account only average perfusion values, we quantified the inherent fluctuations across a wide range of frequencies in SMMs, atypical nevi, benign nevi and psoriasis, using wavelet analysis. This time-frequency representation is of even greater importance in SMM vasculature than in normal skin, due to the heterogeneity introduced by tumour angiogenesis.…”

“…Blood perfusion in skin cancer has previously been investigated using laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) 11 12 13 14 15 , a non-invasive technique which has been applied successfully to the characterisation of blood perfusion and its dynamics in various vascular diseases 16 , as well as during angiogenesis 17 . Skin cancers from basal cell carcinoma to malignant melanoma have been described in terms of their average blood perfusion values in these studies 12 13 14 15 ; however, the important dynamical properties of their perfusion have been largely overlooked.…”

High-resolution in-situ LDV monitoring system for measuring velocity distribution in blood vessel

“…In a previous study, we demonstrated that an L-MLDV system could be used to visualize the blood flow in the capillaries of a mouse [28][29][30]. However, the values in our velocity images were averaged over the measurement period (1.0 s), and the possibility of simultaneous blood flow measurements at all points in the imaged area was not discussed.…”

Fibre optic intravascular measurements of blood flow: A review

“…Tanaka and Benedek [101] overcame this challenge with fibre optics; they exposed the femoral vein of a rabbit and used a needle to insert a 500 µm diameter fibre directly into the vessel to make flow measurements. Refinements to this measurement paradigm were undertaken in a wide range of subsequent studies [102][103][104], which included deploying the sensor fibre via needles and micromanipulators [95,[105][106][107]. In 2014, Tajikawa et al showed that the velocity distribution of human, caprine and bovine blood could be measured very accurately with LDV [108].…”