title: Hemodynamic measurements from individual blood cells in early mammalian embryos with Doppler swept source OCT.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77584, USA.
authors.forename: Irina V
authors.initials: IV
authors.lastname: Larina
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ivers
authors.forename: Saba
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Syed
authors.forename: Mary E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Dickinson
authors.forename: Kirill V
authors.initials: KV
authors.lastname: Larin