Our colleague Pradipta Mukherjee recently reported a non-invasive three-dimensional (3D) imaging of microvascular complex in mouse livers. The imaging was performed by multi-contrast optical coherence tomography (OCT) developed by our group at the University of Tsukuba.
In this study, he investigated the functional and structural properties of healthy and early fibrotic mouse liver tissues using the custom-made multi-contrast OCT which is capable of measuring tissue dynamics, attenuation coefficient, and local birefringence. High dynamics appearance was found in healthy liver microvascular complex just after the scarification. In addition, a clear 3D network of vessel-like structure was clearly visualized in early fibrotic liver without any contrast agent.
So, multi-contrast OCT might become a powerful tool to investigate liver metabolic disorders in a nondestructive.
The details of the research is published in Scientific Reports.
私達の研究室の Pradipta Mukherjee 研究員が「マウス肝臓の血管周辺組織の活動の三次元ラベルフリーイメージング」について論文発表を行いました。
この研究では、私達のグループで開発された、3次元ラベルフリーなマルチコントラストOCT顕微鏡を用いてマウス肝臓組織の形態、活動性、光散乱特性、複屈折（偏光）特性の三次元画像化を行っています。この研究により、正常マウスと肝線維化モデルマウスの肝臓両方で、組織摘出後にも血管付近に強い組織活動を示す領域が存在することが画像化によって示されました。
この研究の詳細は Scientific Reports 誌に掲載されています。
Citation: P. Mukherjee, A. Miyazawa, S. Fukuda, T. Yamashita, D. Lukmanto, K. Okada, I. A. El-Sadek, L. Zhu, S. Makita, T. Oshika, and Y. Yasuno, "Label-free functional and structural imaging of liver microvascular complex in mice by Jones matrix optical coherence tomography," Sci. Rep. 11, 20054 (2021).