Doppler standard deviation imaging for clinical monitoring of in vivo human skin blood flow

We used a novel phase-resolved optical Doppler tomographic (ODT) technique with very high flow-velocity sensitivity (10 mu m/s) and high spatial resol ution (10 mu m) to image blood flow in port-wine stain (PWS) birth-marks in human skin. in addition to the regular ODT velocity and structural images, we use the variance of blood flow velocity to map the PWS vessels. Our dev ice combines ODT and therapeutic systems such that PWS blood flow can be mo nitored in situ before and after laser treatment. To the authors' knowledge this is the first clinical application of ODT to provide a fast semiquanti tative evaluation of the efficacy of PWS laser therapy in situ and in real time. (C) 2000 Optical Society of America.