Noncontact Wide-Field Multispectral Imaging for Tissue Characterization

Imaging of large tissue areas (>5 cm(2)) is often desired in clinical settings, e.g., of tissue oxygenation. Intrinsic contrasts such as absorption and scattering changes have the potential to enhance diagnostics and help monitor diseased tissue. An overview of existing noncontact multispectral diffuse reflectance imaging modalities for tissue characterization based on intrinsic optical contrast due to absorption and scattering properties of tissue is given here. Also, an overview of instrumentation advances, modeling approaches, applications, and ongoing work is described, primarily in, but not limited to, skin imaging, demonstrating the benefits and limitations of wide-field diffuse reflectance imaging.