PhotoniX, Volume. 5, Issue 1, 7(2024)
Visualizing cortical blood perfusion after photothrombotic stroke in vivo by needle-shaped beam optical coherence tomography angiography
Optical imaging techniques provide low-cost, non-radiative images with high spatiotemporal resolution, making them advantageous for long-term dynamic observation of blood perfusion in stroke research and other brain studies compared to non-optical methods. However, high-resolution imaging in optical microscopy fundamentally requires a tight optical focus, and thus a limited depth of field (DOF). Consequently, large-scale, non-stitched, high-resolution images of curved surfaces, like brains, are difficult to acquire without z-axis scanning. To overcome this limitation, we developed a needle-shaped beam optical coherence tomography angiography (NB-OCTA) system, and for the first time, achieved a volumetric resolution of less than 8 μm in a non-stitched volume space of 6.4 mm × 4 mm × 620 μm in vivo. This system captures the distribution of blood vessels at 3.4-times larger depths than normal OCTA equipped with a Gaussian beam (GB-OCTA). We then employed NB-OCTA to perform long-term observation of cortical blood perfusion after stroke in vivo, and quantitatively analyzed the vessel area density (VAD) and the diameters of representative vessels in different regions over 10 days, revealing different spatiotemporal dynamics in the acute, sub-acute and chronic phase of post-ischemic revascularization. Benefiting from our NB-OCTA, we revealed that the recovery process is not only the result of spontaneous reperfusion, but also the formation of new vessels. This study provides visual and mechanistic insights into strokes and helps to deepen our understanding of the spontaneous response of brain after stroke.
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Xiangyu Guo, Jingjing Zhao, Liqun Sun, Varun Gupta, Lin Du, Komal Sharma, Aidan Vleck, Kaitlyn Liang, Liangcai Cao, Lingjie Kong, Yuanmu Yang, Yong Huang, Adam Zerda, Guofan Jin. Visualizing cortical blood perfusion after photothrombotic stroke in vivo by needle-shaped beam optical coherence tomography angiography[J]. PhotoniX, 2024, 5(1): 7
Category: Research Articles
Received: Nov. 8, 2023
Accepted: Mar. 13, 2024
Published Online: Apr. 9, 2024
The Author Email: Huang Yong (huangyong2015@bit.edu.cn), Zerda Adam (adlz@stanford.edu), Jin Guofan (jgf-dpi@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn)