Whole-body multispectral photoacoustic imaging of adult zebrafish.

Na Huang,Heng Guo,Lei Xi,Wei Ge,Jian Rong,Zhiwei Zhang,Weizhi Qi,Zhen Yuan,Huabei Jiang

doi:10.1364/boe.7.003543

Abstract

The zebrafish, an ideal vertebrate for studying developmental biology and genetics, is increasingly being used to understand human diseases, due to its high similarity to the human genome and its optical transparency during embryonic stages. Once the zebrafish has fully developed, especially wild-type breeds, conventional optical imaging techniques have difficulty in imaging the internal organs and structures with sufficient resolution and penetration depth. Even with established mutant lines that remain transparent throughout their life cycle, it is still challenging for purely optical imaging modalities to visualize the organs of juvenile and adult zebrafish at a micro-scale spatial resolution. In this work, we developed a non-invasive three-dimensional photoacoustic imaging platform with an optimized illumination pattern and a cylindrical-scanning-based data collection system to image entire zebrafish with micro-scale resolutions of 80 μm and 600 μm in the lateral and axial directions, respectively. In addition, we employed a multispectral strategy that utilized excitation wavelengths from 690 nm to 930 nm to statistically quantify the relative optical absorption spectrum of major organs.

Highlights

In the past two decades, the zebrafish has attracted increasing attention from the biological, medical, and pharmaceutical communities as an ideal model for studying the evolution, development, diseases, and treatment of vertebrates [1,2,3,4]
Even with established mutant lines that remain transparent throughout their life cycle, it is still challenging for purely optical imaging modalities to visualize the organs of juvenile and adult zebrafish at a micro-scale spatial resolution
We developed a non-invasive three-dimensional photoacoustic imaging platform with an optimized illumination pattern and a cylindrical-scanning-based data collection system to image entire zebrafish with micro-scale resolutions of 80 μm and 600 μm in the lateral and axial directions, respectively

Summary

Introduction

In the past two decades, the zebrafish has attracted increasing attention from the biological, medical, and pharmaceutical communities as an ideal model for studying the evolution, development, diseases, and treatment of vertebrates [1,2,3,4]. This feature allows conventional optical imaging modalities, such as epifluorescence microscopy, confocal microscopy, multiphoton microscopy (MPM), selective plane illumination microscopy (SPIM), and optical coherence tomography (OCT), to image organs/structures of interest at an ultrahigh spatial resolution [9,10,11,12]. Due to the rapid growth of zebrafish, purely optical techniques have difficulty in visualizing organs and structures inside the zebrafish in juvenile and adult stages with sufficient resolution and penetration depth. Apart from optical imaging modalities, magnetic resonance microimaging (μMRI), micro computed tomography (μCT), and ultrasound biomicroscopy, which use intrinsic contrast, have been successfully applied in zebrafish studies. The low contrast and strong speckle artifacts of its ultrasound images prevents its extensive application

Methods

Results

Conclusion