Label-free Histopathological Vessel Imaging Based on Serial Optical Coherence Tomography

Abstract

Blood vessels are the tubes that exchange nutrients and waste products from our bodies and have a dense network of large vessels to capillaries. If the network of these ducts is lost its functions due to or ischemia, it becomes a serious problem leading to complications of various organs. There are macroscopic or microscopic ways of imaging these vessels. However, the highest resolution achievable is beyond the scale of the cell, so their application remains in large-scale organ structures and functions. Moreover, the microscopic method can obtain a precise image of a cell, but the depth of the image is only a few hundred microns, so it can hardly be extended to study the function or structure of the organ because it is hardly light. Optical Coherence Tomography is a potential imaging modality that makes it possible for achieving the cross-sectional image non-invasively in high resolution of sub-micron. Relatively, however, OCT has a limitation in penetration depth, thus has suffered from reconstructing the tissue in 3D when examining pathological studies. Therefore, we utilize the continuous cutting method by simultaneously obtaining the structure and function using the advantages of the macroscopic imaging technique and the advantage of the microscopic imaging technique. In this study, we would like to propose a block face imaging technique combined with OCT. It has very detailed pathological information to distinguish between normal and diseased models. So, other organs such as kidneys, spinal cord, and liver can also be obtained images. Through reconstructed in both morphology and vascular network by using Serial Optical Coherence Tomography, our results are expected to have high potential to identify the morphological changes in other normal and disease models.