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Oxygen is a vital component in wound healing; however, microvascular dysfunction can impact the wound healing process by restricting the flow of oxygen to the site. Patients afflicted with cardiometabolic diseases, such as diabetes, are predisposed towards microvascular insufficiencies and may experience stagnated healing of injured tissues. In past literature Vascular Occlusion Tests (VOTs), coupled with NIRS-based imaging approaches, have been applies with the goal of assessing oxygenated flow to a site; either as dynamic, point-based, measurements or wide-area measurements at discrete timepoints. Breath-holding (BH), as a stimulus, holds potential to induce oxygenated flow changes without the need for additional equipment and the potential discomfort associated with vascular occlusion. In this study, end-exhalation breath-holding was applied on normal subjects. Each subject was imaged via an in-house build Near InfraRed Optical Scanner (NIROS) to acquire continuous spatio-temporal maps of effective hemoglobinbased parameters. Average trendlines of the effective parameters (via oxy- (ΔHbO), deoxy- (ΔHbR), total hemoglobin (ΔHbT), and oxygen saturation (ΔStO2)) were extracted. In addition, a Pearson’s correlation-based approach was applied to obtain correlation maps in terms of the oxygenated flow. Results indicated that statistically significant changes in the oxygenated flow was observed between the BH phase and post-BH phase, with correlation maps indicating regions of positively correlated flow in control subjects. Breath-holding holds potential as a technique to assess oxygenated flow changes and the extent of change between a given site to its surroundings in disease models, as currently assessed in diabetic foot ulcers and radiation dermatitis applications.
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