Patent ID: 8374682

Claim:
A medical instrument comprising: a first stage optic configured to receive light from tissue of a subject, the light containing information about a vascular condition of the tissue; a spectral separator configured to filter light received from the first stage optic; an imaging sensor configured to receive filtered light from the spectral separator and to generate an image of the tissue based on the filtered light; one or more polarizers positioned between the tissue and the imaging sensor and configured to polarize the light received by the imaging sensor; and a diagnostic processor, comprising: a filter control interface operatively connected to the spectral separator; an image acquisition interface operatively coupled to the imaging sensor; a diagnostic module containing information about a plurality of bandwidths of light selected to characterize the vascular condition of the tissue; and a general purpose operating module operatively connected to the filter control interface, the image acquisition interface, and the diagnostic module, the general purpose operating module configured to instruct, based on the diagnostic module, the filter control interface to cause the spectral separator to sequentially filter the light received from the first stage optic in each bandwidth of the plurality of bandwidths, the general purpose operating module further configured to instruct, based on the diagnostic module, the image acquisition interface to obtain from the image sensor a sequence of images, each image corresponding to a bandwidth of the plurality of bandwidths, the general purpose operating module further configured to generate, based on the sequence of images, a two-dimensional index characterizing the vascular condition of the tissue, wherein the two-dimensional index includes a first scale to represent a concentration of oxyhemoglobin in the tissue, and a second scale to indicate a concentration of deoxyhemoglobin in the tissue and wherein corresponding pixels in each image in the sequence of images are co-registered to derive a coefficient for oxyhemoglobin and a coefficient for deoxyhemoglobin from each set of co-registered pixels in the sequence of images, and the coefficient for oxyhemoglobin and the coefficient for deoxyhemoglobin from each set of co-registered pixels in the sequence of images is independently displayed with the two-dimensional index thereby conveying spatial information about oxyhemoglobin concentration and deoxyhemoglobin concentration in the tissue.