Abstract
A visible light spectral domain optical coherence microscopy system was developed. A high axial resolution of 0.88 μm in tissue was achieved using a broad visible light spectrum (425 – 685 nm). Healthy human brain tissue was imaged to quantify the difference between white (WM) and grey matter (GM) in intensity and attenuation. The high axial resolution enables the investigation of amyloid-beta plaques of various sizes in human brain tissue and animal models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). By performing a spectroscopic analysis of the OCM data, differences in the characteristics for WM, GM, and neuritic amyloid-beta plaques were found. To gain additional contrast, Congo red stained AD brain tissue was investigated. A first effort was made to investigate optically cleared mouse brain tissue to increase the penetration depth and visualize hyperscattering structures in deeper cortical regions.
Highlights
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and affected over 48 million people worldwide in 2015 [1]
In this article we present a spectral domain visible light optical coherence microscopy (OCM) system providing sub-micrometer axial resolution with a broadband spectrometer operating at an A-scan rate of 30 k H z
In order to demonstrate the performance of the OCM system for ex vivo imaging of biological tissue, initial experiments were performed in formalin fixed post mortem human brain samples
Summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia and affected over 48 million people worldwide in 2015 [1]. OCM provided contrast between healthy and cancerous tissues based on the difference in the backscattered and backreflected light intensity as well as on the assessment of the attenuation coefficients [7, 16, 17]. These OCM systems provided an axial resolution of 5.0 μm, 6.4 μm and 1.5 μm, respectively. Measurements by a PS-OCM system enabled the visualization of neuritic amyloid-beta plaques in brain tissue of human AD patients and provided information about the polarization characteristics of these pathological structures [12]. Light sources working in the near infrared region have been used to perform
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