An imaging system has been developed to visualize the effect of reactive hyperemia by measuring skin thermal inertia after releasing arterial occlusion because it was known that thermal inertia depends on the blood flow. The method is based on the ability to calculate thermal inertia from thermographic measurements of the response to a known stepwise change in ambient radiation temperature. Measurements were made during reactive hyperemia after 1 min of complete occlusion. After immediate releasing the cuff pressure, the response of reactive hyperemia appeared in the image of thermal inertia, where many island-shaped nonuniform thermal inertia distributions were observed.
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