Monitoring the healing process of laser-induced microvascular lesions using optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy

Optical resolution photoacoustic microscopy (OR-PAM) possesses optical resolution and reveals endogenous optical absorption contrast, promising to be a valuable tool for in vivo microvascular imaging. In laser dermatology, OR-PAM can provide fruitful structural and functional information about the targeted microvascular lesions, such as their three-dimensional (3D) morphology, precise location inside the tissue, and blood oxygenation within single vessels, which will facilitate accurate diagnosis and proper treatment. More importantly, the advantages of noninvasiveness and measurement consistency also permit OR-PAM to monitor the healing process of the laser-surgical wound noninvasively. In this work, we employed OR-PAM to monitor the healing process of microvascular lesions induced by nanosecond-pulsed laser. Our results indicate that OR-PAM could be a very useful tool in laser dermatology and laser microsurgery.