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New Brain-Wide Imaging System Developed to Provide 3D Visualization of Alzheimer’s Disease

  • [아시아뉴스통신] Ian Maclang 기자
  • 송고시간 2019-03-11 16:22
  • 뉴스홈 > 국제
Photo by Puwadol Jaturawutthichai via 123RF
 

A research team called Qingming Luo’s Visible Brain-Wide Networks at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China developed a system called cryo-micro-optical sectioning tomography which improves the ability to capture images of senile plaques in the whole mouse brain. This provides a 3D visualization of protein deposits typically found in Alzheimer’s disease.


“Studying the brain-wide distribution of senile plaques in mice will facilitate an understanding of how brain functions deteriorate during Alzheimer’s disease progression. We hope that cryo-MOST will accelerate the development and evaluation of Alzheimer’s disease treatments,” said Jing Yuan, a key member of the research team.


Cyro-MOST takes advantage of the natural fluorescence of senile plagues after exposure to excitation light, a property called autofluorescence. Researchers discovered the process to brighten autofluorescence by simply lowering the temperature of the tissue to less than -100 degrees Celsius to produce better imaging results.


“Exogenous dyes may lead to unspecific, false-positive or uneven labeling in brain tissue, which impedes observation of authentic pathological structure changes of Alzheimer’s disease. Our label-free approach avoids these problems while also simplifying the sample preparation, thus accelerating the research process,” said Yuan.


A system was created by the researchers which allowed imaging of a sample immersed in liquid nitrogen to sustain the ultra-low temperatures needed for enhancing fluorescence. They used the system to image a whole brain of a 17 month APP/PS1 mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease to demonstrate the capability of cryo-MOST in capturing brain-wide images of senile plaques.


“The images from an aged Alzheimer’s disease mouse revealed that senile plagues have spread to the whole brain. This indicates that the disease not only hurts memory and intelligence but may also cause an overall deterioration of other brain functions,” said Yuan.



Researchers of Cryo-MOSTares now working to improve the automation of the new system to speed up image acquisition and incorporation of enhancements to improve image quality. This will allow the use of the system in more applications.