Real-Time Imaging of Circulating Individual Blood Cells in Mammalian Embryos with Doppler SSOCT

Abstract

Congenital cardiovascular (CV) defects are present in approximately 1% of live births. Moreover, among deaths due to birth defects, cardiovascular failures are the most likely. Therefore, characterization of mammalian embryonic cardio dynamics and understanding of the hemodynamic changes that occur during embryonic development is crucial for improving diagnostics, prevention, and treatment of cardiovascular defects and diseases. In this work, we combined Swept Source Optical Coherence Tomography (SSOCT) with live mouse embryo culture protocols to generate structural 2-D and 3-D imaging and hemodynamic measurements in live 8.5 day embryos. Our data show that individual circulating blood cells can be visualized with structural SSOCT and the velocity of single moving blood cells were measured during different phases of heartbeat cycle with Doppler SSOCT. These results demonstrate that this imaging modality could be an extremely useful tool for structural and hemodynamic analysis at the earliest stages of mammalian blood circulation.