A Long-Term Clearing Cranial Window for Longitudinal Imaging of Cortical and Calvarial Ischemic Injury through the Intact Skull

Abstract

Skull is a reservoir for supplying immune cells that mediate brain immune surveillance. However, during intravital optical imaging of brain, conventional cranial windows requiring skull thinning or removal disrupt brain immunity integrity. Here, a novel long-term clearing cranial window (LCCW) based on the intact skull, dedicated to chronic skull transparency maintenance, is proposed. It significantly improves optical imaging resolution and depth, by which the cortical and calvarial vascular injury and regeneration processes after ischemic injury are longitudinally monitored in awake mice. Results show that calvarial blood vessels recover earlier than the cortex. And the transcriptome analysis reveals that gene expression patterns and immune cells abundances exist substantial differences between brain and skull after ischemic injury, which may be one of the causes for the time lag between their vascular recovery. These findings bring great enlightenment to vascular regeneration and reconstruction. Moreover, LCCW provides a minimally invasive approach for imaging the brain and skull bone marrow.