An automated method for microvascular blood flow analysis based on spatiotemporal images

Velocity of micro vessels is an important indicator that reflects the microcirculatory state. Video images are analyzed quantitatively and semi-quantitatively using time-consuming and semi-automated techniques for blood flow measurement. Current technology is limited by poor image stability, low resolution and imaging artifacts. In light of these difficulties, many researchers have used spatiotemporal image analysis to quantitatively measure blood flow. This paper presents an automatic method for microvascular blood flow analysis which is based on Fourier transform and principal component analysis, and it is able to estimate trace orientation and blood flow velocity in noisy spatiotemporal images. The experiments show that the agreement between the results obtained by manual and by the proposed method reached up to 92%.