ABSTRACT
Microvascular blood ¦ow (BF) delivers nutrients such as oxygen (O2) to tissue and removes metabolic by-products from tissue. Normal microvascular BF is thus critical for tissue function. Abnormal BF is associated with conditions such as cardiovascular disease, stroke, head trauma, peripheral arterial disease (PAD), and cancer (Yu et al. 2005a, b, 2006, Durduran et al. 2009b, Zhou et al. 2009). ™erefore, measurement of BF holds potential to provide useful information for diagnosis of tissue disease and for monitoring therapeutic ežects.
