A technology to clearly visualize the state of blood vessels under the skin without contact has been developed by research groups at Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, and Arizona State University.In addition to being able to easily see the veins of elderly people and children who have difficulty in injecting or collecting blood due to their thin blood vessels, it is expected to be applied to the treatment of varicose veins in the lower extremities where the blood vessels in the legs swell like humps.

 According to the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, when light is applied to the skin from a light source, most of it is reflected on the surface, but some of it enters the inside of the skin and is scattered.Therefore, there is a slight difference between the position where the light hits the skin and the position where the light comes out through the inside.

 Therefore, the research group prepared a measuring device that arranges a commercially available laser scanning projector and a rolling shutter type camera in parallel, and intentionally provided a slight difference of 1 millisecond or less between the light irradiation and the shutter of the camera on the skin. As a result of selecting and capturing only the light that passes through the inside and scatters, we succeeded in photographing the blood vessels under the skin.

 With this system, it is not affected by external light, so it can be used in everyday brightness, and the use of visible light does not have to worry about the effects on the human body like X-rays.In the future, the research group aims to reduce the size of measuring equipment and take clearer images.

Paper information:[IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics] Programmable Non-Epipolar Indirect Light Transport: Capture and Analysis

University Journal Online Editorial Department

This is the online editorial department of the university journal.
Articles are written by editorial staff who have a high level of knowledge and interest in universities and education.