Hsin-Yi TSAI, Ching-Ching YANG, Min-Wei HUNG, and Kuo-Cheng HUANG^*

Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu 30076, Taiwan

(Received March 31, 2014; Revised June 3, 2014; Accepted June 27, 2014)

A near-infrared (940 nm) image of skin tissue can be substantially enhanced using optical scanning technology (OST) that can reduce the scattering effect and remove the wrinkles or fine hair in the image. Using OST to create the skin tissue image ensured that the contour of blood vessels became more clear than that obtained from the divergent light source. In addition, the oxygen saturation of the blood vessels and tissues obtained using OST were approximately 98.65 and 93.17%, respectively, exhibiting an increase of more than 20% compared with that obtained using divergent light, and approached the value when measured using commercial pulse oximetry. Because the proposed method has a deep light penetration depth and high image intensity and resolution for oxygen saturation analysis, it is highly appropriate to be applied to future studies on diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Key words: optical scanning system, near-infrared light emitting diode (NIR-LED), blood vessel image, scattering effect

^*E-mail address: huangkc@narlabs.org.tw