Researchers at the Technical University of Munich have used an innovative non-invasive technique to image blood vessels under the skin in people suffering from diabetes, and thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) they have been able to provide an ‘assessment’ that can characterise the severity of the patients’ ailment. According to a publication in Nature Biomedical Engineering, once this technology becomes portable, it could be used to track the effectiveness of treatments.
The technique developed by German scientists is called optoacoustic imaging, which harnesses light pulses to create ultrasound directly inside tissues. Tiny tissue expansions and contractions that surround molecules absorb light and create signals that are recorded by sensors and converted into high-resolution images. It is noted that oxygen-carrying haemoglobin represents one such molecule, and because it is concentrated in blood vessels, optoacoustic imaging provides detailed images not available from other non-invasive techniques. Moreover, it is fast and does not involve radiation.
