The past few decades have seen an explosion in the development and use of methods for imaging the human microcirculation during health and disease. The confluence of innovative imaging technologies, affordable computing power, and economies of scale have ushered in a new era of “translational” imaging that permit us to peer into blood vessels of various organs in the human body. These imaging techniques include near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), positron emission tomography (PET), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that are sensitive to microvascular‐derived signals, as well as computed tomography (CT), optical imaging, and ultrasound (US) imaging that are capable of directly acquiring images at, or close to microvascular spatial resolution. Collectively, these imaging modalities enable us to characterize the morphological and functional changes in a tissue's microcirculation that are known to accompany the initiation and progression of numerous pathologies. Although there have been significant advances for imaging the microcirculation in preclinical models, this review focuses on developments in the assessment of the microcirculation in patients with optical imaging, NIRS, PET, US, MRI, and CT, to name a few. The goal of this review is to serve as a springboard for exploring the burgeoning role of translational imaging technologies for interrogating the structural and functional status of the microcirculation in humans, and highlight the breadth of current clinical applications. Making the human microcirculation “visible” in vivo to clinicians and researchers alike will facilitate bench‐to‐bedside discoveries and enhance the diagnosis and management of disease.

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微循环平移成像的进展

在过去的几十年里，健康和疾病期间人体微循环成像方法的开发和使用呈爆炸式增长。创新成像技术、负担得起的计算能力和规模经济的融合开创了“平移”成像的新时代，使我们能够观察人体各个器官的血管。这些成像技术包括对微血管衍生信号敏感的近红外光谱 (NIRS)、正电子发射断层扫描 (PET) 和磁共振成像 (MRI)，以及计算机断层扫描 (CT)、光学成像和超声波。 US）成像能够直接获取微血管空间分辨率或接近微血管空间分辨率的图像。总的来说，这些成像方式使我们能够表征组织微循环的形态和功能变化，这些变化已知伴随着多种病理的发生和进展。尽管临床前模型中微循环成像已经取得了重大进展，但本综述重点关注光学成像、NIRS、PET、US、MRI 和 CT 等患者微循环评估的进展。本次综述的目的是作为一个跳板，探索平移成像技术在探究人类微循环的结构和功能状态方面的新兴作用，并强调当前临床应用的广度。让临床医生和研究人员在体内“看到”人体微循环将有助于实验室到临床的发现，并增强疾病的诊断和管理。