Skin Imaging Technology Now Detects Heart Disease Warning Signs

The imaging technology can capture changes in blood vessel structure, oxygenation, and tissue composition, and it can measure how tiny vessels expand and contract in response to changes in blood flow.

Researchers in Germany have developed an advanced imaging technology that has revealed early indicators of cardiovascular disease by scanning the skin and visualizing changes in the body’s smallest blood vessels.

The technology, known as fast raster-scan optoacoustic mesoscopy, or fast-RSOM, has been designed to identify microvascular endothelial dysfunction, an early marker of heart disease that has until now been difficult to measure noninvasively in humans.

Traditional risk assessment methods focus on factors like blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking status, and obesity, while imaging techniques typically examine larger arteries.

However, growing scientific evidence suggests that dysfunction begins earlier at the microvascular level, within the smallest capillaries that regulate blood flow and oxygen delivery.

Fast-RSOM addresses this gap by using short pulses of light to generate ultrasound signals from tissue, producing highly detailed three-dimensional images beneath the skin.

The imaging technology can capture changes in blood vessel structure, oxygenation, and tissue composition, and crucially, it can measure how tiny vessels expand and contract in response to changes in blood flow.

These functional changes, referred to as microvascular endothelial dysfunction (MiVED), often appear well before structural damage or clinical symptoms develop.

“With fast-RSOM, we can, for the first time, noninvasively assess endothelial dysfunction at single-capillary and skin-layer resolution in humans,” said Dr Hailong He, researcher at the Institute of Biological and Medical Imaging at Helmholtz Munich.

Dr Angelos Karlas, co-first author, vascular surgeon, and senior research scientist at Technical University of Munich (TUM) University Hospital, added, “Our novel approach offers an unprecedented view of how cardiovascular disease manifests at the microvascular level.”

The research team tested the imaging technology on healthy individuals, smokers, and patients with established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

The scans were able to detect functional impairments in capillaries associated with smoking and cardiovascular disease, even in cases where no major structural damage was visible.

This suggests that fast-RSOM could be used to identify people at elevated risk at a much earlier stage than current clinical tools allow.

The study, published in Light: Science & Applications, also highlights the potential clinical practicality of the imaging technology. The system is portable, fast, and does not require invasive procedures, raising the possibility of its use in outpatient clinics or routine cardiovascular screening settings.

“By enabling earlier interventions and more precise monitoring, fast-RSOM could transform how cardiovascular diseases are prevented and managed- improving outcomes for patients and reducing health care costs in the long term,” said Prof. Vasilis Ntziachristos, Director of the Bioengineering Centre at Helmholtz Munich and Professor for Biological Imaging at TUM.

Researchers are now working to validate the biomarkers in larger and more diverse populations and to explore how well they predict future cardiovascular events.

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