Development of innovative optical technologies for quantitative blood perfusion imaging

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We are requesting a spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) system for non-invasive high-speed blood perfusion measurement and high-resolution tissue architecture imaging. Requested tools and instruments will be integrated with existing equipment and consolidated in our common Facility for Biomedical Imaging at CHU Sainte-Justine in Montréal. The last two decades have seen great progress in biomedical imaging with the development of non-invasive optical instruments to measure specific parameters such as haemoglobin oxygen saturation, blood flow index and blood volume. Nevertheless, non-invasive measurement of microvascular blood perfusion remains challenging and is often limited by practical and technological issues. A relatively recent and extremely promising technique to measure blood perfusion and tissue architecture is SD-OCT. Recent advances in SD-OCT instrumentation provide the flexibility required for high-speed, high-resolution and unprecedented penetration for critical imaging applications. However, the existing OCT systems available at CHU Sainte-Justine, Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, École Polytechnique and Université de Montréal are clinical devices that do not allow high-speed data acquisition schemes needed for blood perfusion imaging. It is not possible to adapt or upgrade these systems, strictly implemented to limited data acquisition imaging rates, without the specific flexibility needed for research. Further progress and advance in biomedical imaging is thus limited at CHU Sainte-Justine and in Montréal due to this situation. The commitment of leading optical physicists from Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont and École Polytechnique, as co-applicants and collaborators in the current application, is demonstrating the need and urgency of acquiring and developing the proposed SD-OCT platform. Funding matching support from the CHU Sainte-Justine Research center is additionally supporting the urgency in acquiring the proposed equipment. As biomedical imaging is in full emergence at CHU Sainte-Justine and in Montréal, this new platform will benefit research projects emerging from existing and new collaborations, and therefore the community will continue to grow. These research activities will likely generate a large number of HQP in biomedical imaging sciences, which will increase the quality of research and reputation of all team members’ laboratories.