Post-operative monitoring of tissue perfusion in murine skin flaps using enhanced thermal imaging

Inadequate tissue perfusion is a fundamental cause of early complications following a range of surgeries. We are developing a real-time infrared imaging technique, enhanced thermal imaging (ETI), to detect blood vessels embedded in soft tissue. This study evaluated the potential of ETI to detect capillary growth as an indicator of early wound healing in murine skin flaps. The relationship between vessel density and the thermal signal observed with ETI was explored using MATLAB simulations of a geometrically simplified vascularized tissue model. Simulations showed that increased vessel density corresponded to a greater thermal response at the tissue surface. This trend suggests experimental ETI measurements were related to angiogenesis during wound healing. Studies using a similarly grafted murine model confirmed the presence of angiogenesis with physical vessel counts in fluorescence-labeled frozen sections.