lntravital microscopic measurements of microvascular blood flow by laser flowmeter

Abstract

To measure the microvascular blood flow, we developed an intravital microscopic laser flowmeter. The probe of laser flowmeter was separated with the illuminator and the detector, and the detector was attached to the lens-barrel of intravital microscope. The illuminator was fixed on upper side of objective lens and irradiated to the tissue surface in interest portion. The availability of the present method has been evaluated to apply to measure microvessel blood flow in rat cremaster muscle and kidney under in vivo microscopic field. The velocity changes caused by the application of vasoactivator could be obtained continuously. In addition, we have evaluated the accuracy of the present method in which the blood flow in rat carotid artery was measured by our method and by the commercial based ultrasonic flowmeter simultaneously. From these evaluations, it is suggested that our method would be useful to quantify the microvascular blood flow under intravital microscopic field. The present method allowed good method of observation and measurement of microvascular blood flow in real-time.