Hemoglobin contrast in magnetomotive optical Doppler tomography

We introduce a novel contrast mechanism for imaging blood flow by use of magnetornotive optical Doppler tomography (MM-ODT), which combines an externally applied temporally oscillating high-strength magnetic field with ODT to detect erythrocytes moving according to the field gradient. Hemoglobin contrast was demonstrated in a capillary tube filled with moving blood by imaging the Doppler frequency shift, which was observed independently of blood flow rate and direction. Results suggest that MM-ODT may be a promising technique with which to image blood flow. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.