Heterogeneity of hand skin micro circulation assessed by near infrared 2D imaging

In this paper, we tested the possibility of studying microcirculation spatial heterogeneity by processing Near-Infrared Spectroscopic (NIRS) 2D images of haemoglobin O2 saturation in the hand skin of a normal volunteer, during baseline, ischemia and reperfusion. Background and noise limiting the segmentation process were removed with the derivative based edge detection. Segmentation of test areas in each condition was obtained by means of thresholding based region growing. Results highlight differences in microcirculatory control of blood flow in different regions of the hand skin.