Oxygen Delivery Therapy with EPIFLO Reduces Wound Hyperperfusion in Patients with Chronic Leg Ulcers: A Laser Speckle Contrast Analysis

Portable, handheld, and affordable blood perfusion imager for screening of subsurface cancer in resource-limited settings

Existing procedures of screening subsurface cancers are either prohibitively resource-intensive and expensive or are unable to provide direct quantitative estimates of the relevant physiological parameters for accurate classification accommodating interpatient variabilities and overlapping clinical manifestations. Here, we introduce a handheld and inexpensive blood perfusion imager that provides a noninvasive in situ screening approach for distinguishing precancer, cancer, and normal scenarios by precise quantitative estimation of the localized blood circulation in the tissue over an unrestricted region of interest without any unwarranted noise in the data, augmented by machine learning–based classification. Clinical trials in minimally resourced settings have established the efficacy of the method in differentiating cancerous and precancerous stages of suspected oral abnormalities, as verified by gold-standard biopsy reports.

Precise information on localized variations in blood circulation holds the key for noninvasive diagnostics and therapeutic assessment of various forms of cancer. While thermal imaging by itself may provide significant insights on the combined implications of the relevant physiological parameters, viz. local blood perfusion and metabolic balance due to active tumors as well as the ambient conditions, knowledge of the tissue surface temperature alone may be somewhat inadequate in distinguishing between some ambiguous manifestations of precancer and cancerous lesions, resulting in compromise of the selectivity in detection. This, along with the lack of availability of a user-friendly and inexpensive portable device for thermal-image acquisition, blood perfusion mapping, and data integration acts as a deterrent against the emergence of an inexpensive, contact-free, and accurate in situ screening and diagnostic approach for cancer detection and management. Circumventing these constraints, here we report a portable noninvasive blood perfusion imager augmented with machine learning–based quantitative analytics for screening precancerous and cancerous traits in oral lesions, by probing the localized alterations in microcirculation. With a proven overall sensitivity >96.66% and specificity of 100% as compared to gold-standard biopsy-based tests, the method successfully classified oral cancer and precancer in a resource-limited clinical setting in a double-blinded patient trial and exhibited favorable predictive capabilities considering other complementary modes of medical image analysis as well. The method holds further potential to achieve contrast-free, accurate, and low-cost diagnosis of abnormal microvascular physiology and other clinically vulnerable conditions, when interpreted along with complementary clinically evidenced decision-making perspectives.

Integration of microbubbles with biomaterials in tissue engineering for pharmaceutical purposes

Tissue engineering with the aid of biomaterials is a novel and promising knowledge aiming at improving human life expectancy. Besides, microbubbles are increasingly employed in biomedical applications due to their capability as a reservoir of therapeutic agents and oxygen molecules. In the present study, Microbubbles as the backbone of the research are produced as one of the potent devices in tissue engineering approaches, including drug delivery, wound healing, 3D printing, and scaffolding. It was shown that microbubbles are capable of promoting oxygen penetration and boosting the wound healing process by supplying adequate oxygen. Microbubbles also demonstrated their strength and potency in advancing drug delivery systems by reinforcing mass transfer phenomena. Furthermore, microbubbles developed the mechanical and biological characteristics of engineered scaffolds by manipulating the pores. Increasing cell survival, the biological activity of cells, angiogenesis, cell migration, and also nutrient diffusion into the inner layers of the scaffold were other achievements by microbubbles. In conclusion, the interest of biomedical communities in simultaneous usage of microbubbles and biomaterials under tissue engineering approaches experiences remarkable growth in Pharmaceutical studies.