Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages 1-12Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/srep43477
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Austrian Science Fund [FWF] [P19624-B02, P25823-B24]
- European Union [201880]
- European Research Council [ERC] [640396]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
One major hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is the deposition of extracellular senile plaques and vessel wall deposits composed of amyloid-beta (A beta). In AD, degeneration of neurons is preceded by the formation of A beta plaques, which show different morphological forms. Most of them are birefringent owing to the parallel arrangement of amyloid fibrils. Here, we present polarization sensitive optical coherence microscopy (PS-OCM) for imaging mature neuritic A beta plaques based on their birefringent properties. Formalin-fixed, post-mortem brain samples of advanced stage AD patients were investigated. In several cortical brain regions, neuritic A beta plaques were successfully visualized in tomographic and three-dimensional (3D) images. Cortical grey matter appeared polarization preserving, whereas neuritic plaques caused increased phase retardation. Consistent with the results from PS-OCM imaging, the 3D structure of senile A beta plaques was computationally modelled for different illumination settings and plaque sizes. Furthermore, the birefringent properties of cortical and meningeal vessel walls in CAA were investigated in selected samples. Significantly increased birefringence was found in smaller vessels. Overall, these results provide evidence that PS-OCM is able to assess amyloidosis based on intrinsic birefringent properties.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available