In a study conducted by the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), researchers announced new advances in measuring blood flow velocity in deep tissue.

Blood flow speed is a critical element in assessing tissue functionality as well as diagnosing diseases, and photoacoustic flowmetry (PAF) is already acknowledged as a promising technique for deep tissue measurement of blood flow velocity. The new work demonstrated successful use of a handheld ultrasound probe common in clinical settings, paving the way to explore the feasibility of measuring flow in a physiologically realistic situation.

The study outlined key steps in their processing methods - including image filtering, motion detection, and masking - that brought photoacoustic flowmetry an important step closer to clinical applicability, according to the journal editor, Andreas Mandelis. "The manuscript by Brunker and her colleagues has reported, I believe, one of the most important steps forward in photoacoustic flow measurements, by using a clinical ultrasound array, human whole blood, and wide-field optical illumination in AR-PAF settings," said Mandelis.

"This long-overdue work is extremely exciting for the photoacoustic imaging community, and can potentially bring photoacoustic flow imaging into clinical practice”, added Mandelis. The research is published in the SPIE’s Journal of Biomedical Optics.