Imaging Cerebral Blood Vessels Using Near-Infrared Optical Tomography: A Simulation Study

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Medical Imaging
• Neuroimaging

Background:

• Cerebral veins are crucial for preoperational planning and brain oxygenation monitoring.
• Existing imaging techniques like MRA have limitations including long scan times and contrast agent requirements.
• Near-infrared optical tomography (NIROT) is a promising non-invasive modality for assessing brain vasculature.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a non-invasive, label-free, dynamic time-domain (TD) NIROT system for imaging brain vessels.
• To evaluate the system's performance using simulations incorporating realistic head models.

Main Methods:

• Simulations were conducted using NIRFAST software, employing the finite element method (FEM) for light propagation modeling.
• Both simple and realistic head meshes derived from MRI images were utilized.
• A hybrid FEM-U-Net network was employed for image reconstruction.

Main Results:

• The developed TD-NIROT technique successfully visualized superficial cerebral vessels.
• The imaging achieved a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) below 0.079.
• The hybrid FEM-U-Net approach demonstrated effectiveness in reconstructing vessel images.

Conclusions:

• Non-invasive, label-free TD-NIROT is a viable method for imaging cerebral vasculature.
• The simulation results support the potential of this technique for clinical applications like stroke detection.
• Further development could enhance its capability for deeper brain structure imaging.