Characterization of skin Port-Wine Stain and Hemangioma vascular lesions using Doppler OCT.

Background: Port-Wine Stains (PWS) are vascular malformations of the dermis, whereas hemangiomas are vascular tumors usually present at birth. Early non-invasive diagnosis of the vascular lesion would greatly increase treatment efficiency. We propose to use optical coherence tomography (OCT), a morphological imaging technique, coupled with functional blood-flow Doppler modality.

Methods: We imaged lesions from five patients: one with PWS, four with hemangiomas, using a Thorlabs Swept-Source OCT system at 1325 nm. Additional Doppler images allow for distinguishing blood vessels from empty cavities that appear similar on conventional OCT images.

Results: We are able to distinguish between normal skin and vascular lesions. The PWS lesion presents blood vessels of mean diameter 114 μm with a standard deviation of 92 μm, and mean depth 304 μm with a standard deviation of 99 μm. The hemangiomas present blood vessels of mean diameter 39 μm with a standard deviation of 19 μm, and mean depth 298 μm with a standard deviation of 133 μm.

Conclusion: We show a significant difference between the vascular characteristics of the studied PWS and hemangiomas lesions. We believe that OCT complemented by Doppler OCT could be a promising method for future non-invasive diagnosis and monitoring of some vascular lesions.