Software development for estimation of optical clearing agent’s diffusion coefficients in biological tissues

摘要

The study of chemical diffusion in biological tissues is a research field of highimportance and with application in many clinical, research and industrial areas. Theevaluation of diffusion and viscosity properties of chemicals in tissues is necessary tocharacterize treatments or inclusion of preservatives in tissues or organs for lowtemperature conservation. Recently, we have demonstrated experimentally that thediffusion properties and dynamic viscosity of sugars and alcohols can be evaluated fromoptical measurements. Our studies were performed in skeletal muscle, but our resultshave revealed that the same methodology can be used with other tissues and differentchemicals. Considering the significant number of studies that can be made with thismethod, it becomes necessary to turn data processing and calculation easier. With thisobjective, we have developed a software application that integrates all processing andcalculations, turning the researcher work easier and faster. Using the same experimentaldata that previously was used to estimate the diffusion and viscosity of glucose inskeletal muscle, we have repeated the calculations with the new application. Comparingbetween the results obtained with the new application and with previous independentroutines we have demonstrated great similarity and consequently validated theapplication. This new tool is now available to be used in similar research to obtain thediffusion properties of other chemicals in different tissues or organs.