Hemodynamic measurements from individual blood cells in early mammalian embryos with Doppler swept source OCT

摘要

The most common and lethal birth defects affect the cardiovascular (CV) system. The mouse is a superior model for identifying and understanding mammalian CV birth defects, but there is a great need for tools that can detect early and subtle deficiencies in cardiac function in mouse embryos. We combined swept source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) with live mouse embryo culture protocols to generate structural two-dimensional and three-dimensional imaging and hemodynamic measurements in a live 8.5 day embryo just a few hours after the beginning of a heartbeat. Our data show that individual circulating blood cells can be visualized with structural SS-OCT, and using Doppler SS-OCT the velocity of single moving blood cells were measured during different phases of the heartbeat cycle. These results demonstrate that Doppler SS-OCT is an extremely useful tool for structural and hemodynamic analysis at the earliest stages of mammalian blood circulation.