Abstract
Detection of cholesterol crystals (Chcs) in atherosclerosis disease is important for understanding the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis. Polarization microscopy (PM) has been in use traditionally for detecting Chcs, but they have difficulty in distinguishing Chcs with other crystalline materials in tissue, such as collagens. Thus, most studies using PM have been limited to studying cell-level samples. Although various methods have been proposed to detect Chcs with high specificity, most of them have low signal-to-noise ratios, a high system construction cost, and are difficult to operate due to a complex protocol. To address these problems, we have developed a simple and inexpensive universal serial bus (USB) PM system equipped with a 5700 K cool-white light-emitting diode (LED). In this system, Chcs are shown in a light blue color while collagen is shown in a yellow color. More importantly, the contrast between Chcs and collagens is improved by a factor of 2.3 under an aqueous condition in these PM images. These imaging results are well-matched with the ones acquired with two-photon microscopy (TPM). The system can visualize the features of atherosclerosis that cannot be visualized by the conventional hematoxylin and eosin and oil-red-o staining methods. Thus, we believe that this simple USB PM system can be widely used to identify Chcs in atherosclerosis.
Highlights
Studies have shown that atherosclerosis is one of the leading causes of death from stroke and ischemic heart disease [1,2,3]
We have developed a simple and inexpensive Polarization microscopy (PM) system based on a simple universal serial bus (USB) microscope to reliably image cholesterol crystals (Chcs) and distinguish them from other crystal structures
In order to achieve a better understanding of the pathological processes involved in atherosclerosis
Summary
Studies have shown that atherosclerosis is one of the leading causes of death from stroke and ischemic heart disease [1,2,3]. According to decades of research, cholesterol-related inflammatory responses are a major cause of atherosclerosis disease [4,5]. Many studies have focused on studying lipid-related inflammation processes to understand atherosclerosis. Lipid staining (i.e., oil-red-o, ORO), macrophage staining (i.e., RAM11), and typical cell staining (i.e., hematoxylin and eosin, H&E) have been widely used to study the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis. Finn et al showed that a thin cap fibro-atheroma (TCFA) is a major factor for unexpected cardiac death [2]. Finding the patient’s TCFA is critical for predicting vulnerable plaque and
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