High-speed swept source optical coherence Doppler tomography for deep brain microvascular imaging

Sci Rep. 2016 Dec 9:6:38786. doi: 10.1038/srep38786.

Abstract

Noninvasive microvascular imaging using optical coherence Doppler tomography (ODT) has shown great promise in brain studies; however, high-speed microcirculatory imaging in deep brain remains an open quest. A high-speed 1.3 μm swept-source ODT (SS-ODT) system is reported which was based on a 200 kHz vertical-cavity-surface-emitting laser. Phase errors induced by sweep-trigger desynchronization were effectively reduced by spectral phase encoding and instantaneous correlation among the A-scans. Phantom studies have revealed a significant reduction in phase noise, thus an enhancement of minimally detectable flow down to 268.2 μm/s. Further in vivo validation was performed, in which 3D cerebral-blood-flow (CBF) networks in mouse brain over a large field-of-view (FOV: 8.5 × 5 × 3.2 mm3) was scanned through thinned skull. Results showed that fast flows up to 3 cm/s in pial vessels and minute flows down to 0.3 mm/s in arterioles or venules were readily detectable at depths down to 3.2 mm. Moreover, the dynamic changes of the CBF networks elicited by acute cocaine such as heterogeneous responses in various vessel compartments and at different cortical layers as well as transient ischemic events were tracked, suggesting the potential of SS-ODT for brain functional imaging that requires high flow sensitivity and dynamic range, fast frame rate and a large FOV to cover different brain regions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Arterioles / diagnostic imaging*
  • Arterioles / drug effects
  • Cerebrovascular Circulation* / drug effects
  • Cocaine / pharmacology
  • Doppler Effect
  • Functional Neuroimaging / methods*
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Imaging, Three-Dimensional
  • Ischemic Attack, Transient / diagnostic imaging
  • Lasers
  • Male
  • Mice
  • Mice, Inbred C57BL
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Pia Mater / blood supply*
  • Pia Mater / diagnostic imaging
  • Pia Mater / drug effects
  • Tomography, Optical Coherence / methods*
  • Venules / diagnostic imaging*
  • Venules / drug effects

Substances

  • Cocaine