Vascular tissue perfusion is a crucial feature that determines the success or failure of surgical treatment. Determining the quality and adequacy of vascular perfusion during the operation has always been a challenge for surgeons worldwide.
Indocyanine green (ICG) was the first fluorescent tracer to enter the commercial market in 1959, and is increasingly being used to determine vascular tissue perfusion over the past decade. Applications for intraoperative use are rapidly expanding, including healing of anastomosis, intestinal ischemia, pedicled or free flap reconstructions, ischemia of extremities, or to determine vascular perfusion of whole organs (e.g. after kidney transplantation or adrenal gland surgery).
Although ICG is increasingly being used worldwide for intraoperative imaging of vascular perfusion, the state-of-the art imaging strategies lack the tools to reliably quantify the fluorescent signal in an objective and reproducible manner. Many researchers and institutions that are associated with the DFGS are therefore currently focused on developing standardization and quantification methods for ICG angiography to improve the quality of our surgical treatment.