Quantitative Characterization of Age-Related Changes in Peripheral Vessels of a Human Palm Using Raster-Scan Optoacoustic Angiography

Abstract

The analysis of age-related changes in skin vessels based on optoacoustic angiographic images during the in vivo skin monitoring of healthy volunteers at different ages is reported. As a result of a quantitative analysis of the three-dimensional OA images, the age-associated differences in the following image parameters were revealed: image intensity, ratio of blood content at different characteristics depths, total vessel length, and number of branches. The reported approach can be effectively employed for automatic assessment and monitoring of age-related vascular changes in the skin and underlying tissues.

Keywords

• optoacoustic angiography
• age-related changes in skin vessels
• quantitative analysis of blood vessel net