Optical coherence tomography visualizes neurons in human entorhinal cortex

Caroline Magnain; Jean C. Augustinack; Ender Konukoglu; Matthew P. Frosch; Sava Sakadžić; Ani Varjabedian; Nathalie Garcia; Van J. Wedeen; David A. Boas; Bruce Fischl

doi:10.1117/1.NPh.2.1.015004

9 February 2015 Optical coherence tomography visualizes neurons in human entorhinal cortex

Caroline Magnain, Jean C. Augustinack, Ender Konukoglu, Matthew P. Frosch, Sava Sakadžić, Ani Varjabedian, Nathalie Garcia, Van J. Wedeen, David A. Boas, Bruce Fischl

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Neurophotonics, Vol. 2, Issue 1, 015004 (February 2015). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.NPh.2.1.015004

Abstract

The cytoarchitecture of the human brain is of great interest in diverse fields: neuroanatomy, neurology, neuroscience, and neuropathology. Traditional histology is a method that has been historically used to assess cell and fiber content in the ex vivo human brain. However, this technique suffers from significant distortions. We used a previously demonstrated optical coherence microscopy technique to image individual neurons in several square millimeters of en-face tissue blocks from layer II of the human entorhinal cortex, over 50 μm in depth. The same slices were then sectioned and stained for Nissl substance. We registered the optical coherence tomography (OCT) images with the corresponding Nissl stained slices using a nonlinear transformation. The neurons were then segmented in both images and we quantified the overlap. We show that OCT images contain information about neurons that is comparable to what can be obtained from Nissl staining, and thus can be used to assess the cytoarchitecture of the ex vivo human brain with minimal distortion. With the future integration of a vibratome into the OCT imaging rig, this technique can be scaled up to obtain undistorted volumetric data of centimeter cube tissue blocks in the near term, and entire human hemispheres in the future.

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Caroline Magnain, Jean C. Augustinack, Ender Konukoglu, Matthew P. Frosch, Sava Sakadžić, Ani Varjabedian, Nathalie Garcia, Van J. Wedeen, David A. Boas, and Bruce Fischl "Optical coherence tomography visualizes neurons in human entorhinal cortex," Neurophotonics 2(1), 015004 (9 February 2015). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.NPh.2.1.015004

Published: 9 February 2015

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