Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) leads to an increased risk of myocardial infarction and stroke, increased mortality, and reduced quality of life. The mouse hind limb ischemia (HLI) model is the most commonly used system for studying the mechanisms of collateral vessel formation and for testing new PAD therapies, but there is a lack of techniques for acquiring physiologically-relevant, quantitative data intravitally in this model. In this work, non-invasive, quantitative optical imaging techniques were applied to the mouse HLI model over a time course. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaged changes in blood flow (Doppler OCT) and microvessel morphology (speckle variance OCT) through the skin of haired mice with high resolution. Hyperspectral imaging was also used to quantify blood oxygenation. In ischemic limbs, blood oxygenation in the footpad was substantially reduced after induction of ischemia followed by complete recovery by three weeks, consistent with standard measures. Three dimensional images of the vasculature distal to vessel occlusion acquired with speckle variance OCT revealed changes in OCT flow signal and vessel morphology. Taken together, OCT and hyperspectral imaging enable intravital acquisition of both functional and morphological data which fill critical gaps in understanding structure-function relationships that contribute to recovery in the mouse HLI model. Therefore, these optical imaging methods hold promise as tools for studying the mechanisms of vascular recovery and evaluating novel therapeutic treatments in preclinical studies.

Date Published: 20 March 2013
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8571, Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XVII, 85711Z (20 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2007038

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8571:
Optical Coherence Tomography and Coherence Domain Optical Methods in Biomedicine XVII
James G. Fujimoto; Joseph A. Izatt; Valery V. Tuchin, Editor(s)