Heart-rate sensitive optical coherence angiography for measuring vascular changes due to posttraumatic brain injury in mice

Abstract

© The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in direct vascular disruption, triggering edema, and reduction in cerebral blood flow. Therefore, understanding the pathophysiology of brain microcirculation following TBI is important for the development of effective therapies. Optical coherence angiography (OCA) is a promising tool for evaluating TBI in rodent models. We develop an approach to OCA that uses the heart-rate frequency to discriminate between static tissue and vasculature. This method operates on intensity data and is therefore not phase sensitive. Furthermore, it does not require spatial overlap of voxels and thus can be applied to preexisting datasets for which oversampling may not have been explicitly considered. Heart-rate sensitive OCA was developed for dynamic assessment of mouse microvasculature post-TBI. Results show changes occurring at 5- min intervals within the first 50 min of injury.