Minimally invasive method for the point-of-care quantification of lymphatic vessel function.

Current clinical methods for the evaluation of lymphatic vessel function, crucial for early diagnosis and evaluation of treatment response of several pathological conditions, in particular of postsurgical lymphedema, are based on complex and mainly qualitative imaging techniques. To address this unmet medical need, we established a simple strategy for the painless and quantitative assessment of cutaneous lymphatic function. We prepared a lymphatic-specific tracer formulation, consisting of the clinically approved near-infrared fluorescent dye, indocyanine green, and the solubilizing surfactant Kolliphor HS15. The tracer was noninvasively delivered to the dermal layer of the skin using MicronJet600 hollow microneedles, and the fluorescence signal decay at the injection site was measured over time using a custom-made, portable detection device. The decay rate of fluorescence signal in the skin was used as a direct measure of lymphatic vessel drainage function. With this method, we could quantify impaired lymphatic clearance in transgenic mice lacking dermal lymphatics and distinguish distinct lymphatic clearance patterns in pigs in different body locations and under manual stimulus. Overall, this method has the potential for becoming a noninvasive and quantitative clinical "office test" for lymphatic function assessment.

Surface plasmon resonance sensor utilizing an integrated organic light emitting diode.

A novel surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on an integrated planar and polychromatic light source is presented. The sensor comprises an organic light emitting diode (OLED) and a metallic sensing layer located on opposite sides of a glass prism. We successfully fabricated and tested prototype sensors based on this approach by the use of different prism geometries and OLEDs with blue, green and red emission color. We investigated the angular and wavelength dependent SPR dispersion relation for sensing layers consisting of silver and gold in contact with air. Further on we demonstrated the sensor function by real time monitoring of temperature changes inside an adjacent water reservoir as well as by recording the dissolving process of sodium chloride in water. The presented technique offers the advantage that there is no necessity to couple light from external bulky sources such as lasers or halogen lamps into the sensing device which makes it particularly interesting for miniaturization.