Abstract

As the major neurodegenerative disease of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has caused an enormous social and economic burden on society. Currently, AD has neither clear pathogenesis nor effective treatments. Positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have been verified as potential tools for diagnosing and monitoring Alzheimer’s disease. However, the high costs, low spatial resolution, and long acquisition time limit their broad clinical utilization. The gold standard of AD diagnosis routinely used in research is imaging AD biomarkers with dyes or other reagents, which are unsuitable for in vivo studies owing to their potential toxicity and prolonged and costly process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for human use. Furthermore, these exogenous reagents might bring unwarranted interference to mechanistic studies, causing unreliable results. Several label-free optical imaging techniques, such as infrared spectroscopic imaging (IRSI), Raman spectroscopic imaging (RSI), optical coherence tomography (OCT), autofluorescence imaging (AFI), optical harmonic generation imaging (OHGI), etc., have been developed to circumvent this issue and made it possible to offer an accurate and detailed analysis of AD biomarkers. In this review, we present the emerging label-free optical imaging techniques and their applications in AD, along with their potential and challenges in AD diagnosis.

Highlights

  • Received: 22 April 2021 Accepted: 02 July 2021 Published: 22 July 2021Citation: Liu K, Li J, Raghunathan R, Zhao H, Li X and Wong STC (2021) The Progress of Label-Free Optical Imaging in Alzheimer’s DiseaseScreening and Diagnosis

  • We review the present applications of label-free optical imaging in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and discuss their potential and challenges for AD diagnosis

  • This review provides a comprehensive overview of different classes of label-free optical imaging techniques that offer high resolution, reagent-free, cost-effective, and rapid imaging in revealing metabolic, morphologic, chemical, and structural attributes at the cellular level in live animal models or human specimens of Alzheimer’s disease

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Summary

Introduction

Received: 22 April 2021 Accepted: 02 July 2021 Published: 22 July 2021Screening and Diagnosis. AD is characterized by progressive impairments of cognition and memory due to irreversible damage of brain neuronal cells. It was the sixth leading cause of death in the United States before 2020, causing nearly 120,000 annual deaths and imposing substantial emotional and financial burdens on families and society (Ahmad and Anderson, 2021). An estimated 6.2 million Americans age 65 and older are living with Alzheimer’s dementia and will cost $355 billion to the United States in 2021. The number of people aged 65 and older with Alzheimer’s dementia is projected to grow to 13.8 million by 2060, and the cost of caring for them to $1.1 trillion by 2050 (No authors listed, 2021)

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