Evaluation of the Skin Blood Flow Contribution to the Non-Invasive Measurement of Muscle Oxygenation by Near Infrared Spectroscopy

• Published in: Journal of Physiological Sciences Vol. 56; no. 3; pp. 267 - 268
• Main Authors: Quaresima, Valentina, Ferrari, Marco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: Japan PHYSIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN 2006; The Physiological Society of Japan; BioMed Central
• Subjects: Evaluation Studies as Topic; Humans; muscle; Muscle, Skeletal - metabolism; near infrared spectroscopy; Optics and Photonics; Oximetry; Oxygen - metabolism; oxygenation; Regional Blood Flow - physiology; Reproducibility of Results; Skin - blood supply; Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared - methods
• ISSN: 1880-6546; 1880-6562
• DOI: 10.2170/physiolsci.L656

In a recent article in the Jpn. J. Physiol. Buono et al. [1]present the results of a study investigating the influence of the changes in the skin blood flow on the near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)based measurement of the rectus femoris muscle oxygenation during local heating or epinephrine injection. Tissue oxygenation was measured by a continuous-wave tissue oximeter(InSpectra TM Tissue Spectrometer System-Model 325, Hutchinson Technologies, Hutchinson, MN, USA). We agree with the authors on：(i)evidencing scarce and inaccurate prior studies on this topic[2-4];(ii)recognizing the importance to investigate the influence of high and low skin blood flow on the measurement of muscle oxygenation by NIRS. On the other hand, we disagree with the authors on the NIRS methodology(in particular, the light source-detector spacing)adopted in their study. The light source-detector distance affects the contribution of skin;in fact increasing this distance properly allows the improvement of the sensitivity of measurement and the increase of the probability of looking at oxygenation deep under the tissue surface[5]. In addition, as already reported by the authors, it is well known that the depth of light penetration also depends on the thickness of subcutaneous adipose tissue[6, 7].