An image analysis system for near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence lymph imaging
Jingdan Zhang, S. Kevin Zhou, Xiaoyan Xiang, John C. Rasmussen, Eva Marie Sevick-Muraca · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2011
Quantitative analysis of lymphatic function is crucial for understanding the lymphatic system and diagnosing the associated diseases. Recently, a near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging system is developed for real-time imaging lymphatic propulsion by intradermal injection of microdose of a NIR fluorophore distal to the lymphatics of interest. However, the previous analysis software3, 4 is underdeveloped, requiring extensive time and effort to analyze a NIR image sequence. In this paper, we develop a number of image processing techniques to automate the data analysis workflow, including an object tracking algorithm to stabilize the subject and remove the motion artifacts, an image representation named flow map to characterize lymphatic flow more reliably, and an automatic algorithm to compute lymph velocity and frequency of propulsion. By integrating all these techniques to a system, the analysis workflow significantly reduces the amount of required user interaction and improves the reliability of the measurement.