Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of recovery process of a 1064 nm laser on laser-induced skin injury:<i>in vivo</i>experimental research

Liu

et al. 2022

IJMS

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Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has considerable application potential in noninvasive diagnosis and disease monitoring. Skin diseases, such as basal cell carcinoma (BCC), are destructive; hence, quantitative segmentation of the skin is very important for early diagnosis and treatment. Deep neural networks have been widely used in the boundary recognition and segmentation of diseased areas in medical images. Research on OCT skin segmentation and laser-induced skin damage segmentation based on deep neural networks is still in its infancy. Here, a segmentation and quantitative analysis pipeline of laser skin injury and skin stratification based on a deep neural network model is proposed. Based on the stratification of mouse skins, a laser injury model of mouse skins induced by lasers was constructed, and the multilayer structure and injury areas were accurately segmented by using a deep neural network method. First, the intact area of mouse skin and the damaged areas of different laser radiation doses are collected by the OCT system, and then the labels are manually labeled by experienced histologists. A variety of deep neural network models are used to realize the segmentation of skin layers and damaged areas on the skin dataset. In particular, the U-Net model based on a dual attention mechanism is used to realize the segmentation of the laser-damage structure, and the results are compared and analyzed. The segmentation results showed that the Dice coefficient of the mouse dermis layer and injury area reached more than 0.90, and the Dice coefficient of the fat layer and muscle layer reached more than 0.80. In the evaluation results, the average surface distance (ASSD) and Hausdorff distance (HD) indicated that the segmentation results are excellent, with a high overlap rate with the manually labeled area and a short edge distance. The results of this study have important application value for the quantitative analysis of laser-induced skin injury and the exploration of laser biological effects and have potential application value for the early noninvasive detection of diseases and the monitoring of postoperative recovery in the future.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Segmentation of Laser-Induced Injury OCT Images Based on a Deep Neural Network Model

Liu

et al. 2022

IJMS

Self Cite

“…Future research will include the evaluation of cutaneous thermal injuries induced by different laser spectral bands, and the damage difference of the different kinds of lasers, such as 1064 nm laser [14] or CO 2 laser [42], would be comparatively researched. Currently, the minimum output radiation dose results in cutaneous thermal injury.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Currently, the minimum output radiation dose results in cutaneous thermal injury. We will find the damage threshold (ED 50 ) [14] of a supercontinuum laser for mouse skin. The injuries in the OAC map were manually delineated; therefore, an automatic segmentation and intelligent algorithm needs to be developed [43].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…1064‐nm laser treatment was also analyzed both subjectively and objectively [8], and the laser was used to modulate migratory dendritic cells to be adjuvants for the immune response to an intradermal influenza vaccine [9]. In recent years, supercontinuum lasers have been also widely used in medicine and photobiology [10–13], and the lasers also occasionally cause skin thermal injuries, which have also been evaluated with the gold standard, a histological examination [14,15]. However, this method needs ex vivo specimens to fix and section.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of Supercontinuum Laser‐Induced Cutaneous Thermal Injuries and Their Repair With OCT Images

Fan

Xin

et al. 2020

Lasers Surg Med

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Background and Objectives Laser‐induced thermal injuries are a heavily researched topic in laser medicine and biomedicine. To explore the quantitative biological effects of laser‐induced injury repair, we propose an optical imaging‐based in vivo evaluation method and discuss the injury effect and repair characteristics of skin tissue. Study Design/Materials and Methods A supercontinumm laser (spectrum width ranged from 400 to 2400 nm) was used to irradiate live mice. The radiation doses were set as 32.85, 65.69, 98.4, and 197.08 J/cm2. Laser‐induced cutaneous thermal injuries were observed and measured after laser radiation. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used to image the injured spots. The optical attenuation coefficient (OAC) was computed using a Fourier‐domain algorithm. Three‐dimensional (3D) visualizations of the injured spots in the OCT images were constructed to qualitatively demonstrate the degree of the thermal injury at different times. The corresponding pathological changes of the skin injuries were observed dynamically. Results Under increasing radiation doses, the injured spots, which ranged in degree from mild to severe, appeared accordingly. The mean OAC value of normal skin was 1.15 ± 0.01 mm−1. The mean values of the OAC maps in the region of interests (ROIs) were 0.88 ± 0.05, 0.91 ± 0.02, 0.93 ± 0.04, and 0.98 ± 0.08 mm−1 at each of the four radiation levels, respectively. Additionally, the 3D OCT visualization showed a directed view of the injured spots and the healing process and was used as a qualitative evaluation method. The OCT images and pathological results showed that the damage tended to vary across all groups, but this trend tended to weaken as the radiation dose increased. Conclusion Optical imaging provides an in vivo noninvasive and real‐time evaluation method to comprehensively quantify supercontinuum laser‐induced thermal injuries and wound healing. The OACs and 3D visualizations of the OCT cubic data enable the areas of the direct injured spots to be measured and the inner structure to be viewed. The results obtained with these techniques indicate that the skin injuries are aggravated and tissue repair trends weaken as the radiation doses increase. This method would have a potential application for laser‐medicine and laser‐biological effects in the future. Lasers Surg. Med. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC

“…These lasers are widely used in the treatment of skin diseases [11,12], such as skin scars [13] and skin rejuvenation [10]. In our previous research, we used macroscopic observations and histological sections to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the recovery process of 1064-nm laser-induced skin injury [14]. The damage effect of some lasers has been investigated [15]; it has also been evaluated by analyzing the histological sections [16].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a 3.8-µm laser-induced skin injury and their repair with in vivo OCT imaging and noninvasive monitoring

Fan

Wang

et al. 2021

Lasers Med Sci

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To explore a 3.8-µm laser-induced damage and wound healing effect, we propose using optical coherence tomography (OCT) and a noninvasive monitoring-based in vivo evaluation method to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the time-dependent biological effect of a 3.8-µm laser. The optical attenuation coefficient (OAC) is computed using a Fourier-domain algorithm. Three-dimensional (3-D) visualization of OCT images has been implemented to visualize the burnt spots. Furthermore, the burnt spots from the 3-D volumetric data was segmented and visualized, and the quantitative parameters of the burnt spots, such as the mean OACs, areas, and volumes, were computed. Then, OCT images and histological sections were analyzed to compare the structural changes. Within a certain radiation range, there is a linear relationship between radiation dose and temperature. Dermoscopic images, OCT images, and histological sections showed that, within a certain dose range, as the radiation doses increased, the cutaneous damage became more serious. One hour after laser radiation, the mean OACs increased and then decreased; the areas of burnt spots always increased and were 0.95 ± 0.07,