Cerebrovascular pathology is closely coupled to cognitive function decline, as indicated by numerous studies at the system level. To better understand the mechanisms of this cognitive decline it is important to resolve how pathological changes in the vasculature - such as perivascular plaques - affect local cerebral blood flow dynamics. This issue is ideally studied in the intact brain at very high spatial resolution. Here, we describe initial results obtained by an approach based on in vivo observation by multi-photon microscopy of vascular plaques and local blood flow measurements in a transgenic mouse model engineered to express the human amyloid precursor protein with the Swedish and Arctic mutations. These mice exhibit a striking abundance of perivascular plaques in the cerebral cortex and are well suited to investigate vascular pathology in Alzheimer's disease.

Date Published: 12 March 2008
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 6860, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences VIII, 686022 (12 March 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.762739

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6860:
Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences VIII
Ammasi Periasamy; Peter T. C. So, Editor(s)