Quantitative and ultra-high-sensitive vascular flow imaging of in vivo human skin by dynamic-optical-coherence-tomography (DOCT)-based OCT angiography

We demonstrate an ultra-high-sensitive OCTA (UHS-OCTA) approach by adopting dynamic OCT (DOCT) algorithms to in vivo human skin imaging. The inner forearm of five human subjects was examined. Each physical location in the scanning field was repetitively measured 32 times in 6.55s by 1310-nm swept-source OCT at 100,000 A-lines/s. Two DOCT algorithms, authentic logarithmic intensity variance (aLIV) and Swiftness, were used to contrast the blood flow. Average intensity projection slabs were generated for every 100 microns beneath the skin surface. Visual inspection found that 100 to 200μm slabs showed looping papillary-dermal capillaries in all subjects, confirming its capacity to reveal a more complex and continuous microvascular network.