Panoramic Near-Infrared Imaging Device for Peripheral Vascular Mapping

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Vascular Imaging

Background:

• Longitudinal mapping of superficial peripheral veins is crucial for managing venous insufficiency, thrombosis, and injuries.
• Current imaging methods are often operator-dependent, expensive, or lack wide-field coverage.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and demonstrate the feasibility of a cost-effective, automated panoramic near-infrared (NIR) imaging system for superficial vascular mapping.
• To establish optimal acquisition parameters and processing pipelines for reliable venous structure visualization.

Main Methods:

• Developed a prototype integrating a motorized rotational frame, NIR illumination (850 nm), lateral mirror, and time-of-flight sensor.
• Employed a custom image processing pipeline including CLAHE, morphological filtering, Otsu binarization, and photogrammetric 3D reconstruction.
• Acquired data from five healthy volunteers with a 35 cm field of view and 30-second acquisition time.

Main Results:

• Identified optimal acquisition parameters (30 ms exposure, analog gain 3.5).
• Successfully isolated superficial venous structures, measuring a mean diameter of 2.69 ± 1.48 mm.
• Generated panoramic, texture-mapped 3D surface reconstructions of the limb.

Conclusions:

• The developed NIR imaging system provides rapid, operator-independent panoramic visualization of superficial veins.
• This system is suitable for longitudinal monitoring and complements duplex ultrasound for vascular change tracking.
• Offers a promising, cost-effective solution for clinical assessment of superficial vascular conditions.