Longitudinal monitoring of pancreatic islet damage in streptozotocin-treated mice with optical coherence microscopy

Pancreatic islets regulate glucose homeostasis in the body, and their dysfunction is closely related to diabetes. Islet transplantation into the anterior chamber of the eye (ACE) was recently developed for both in vivo islet study and diabetes treatment. Optical coherence microscopy (OCM) was previously used to monitor ACE transplanted islets in non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice for detecting autoimmune attack. In this study, OCM was applied to streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mouse models for the early detection of islet damage. A custom extended-focus OCM (xfOCM) was used to image islet grafts in the ACE longitudinally during STZ-induced beta cell destruction together with conventional bright-field (BF) imaging and invasive glucose level measurement. xfOCM detected local structural changes and vascular degradation during the islet damage which was confirmed by confocal imaging of extracted islet grafts. xfOCM detection of islet damage was more sensitive than BF imaging and glucose measurement. Longitudinal xfOCM images of islet grafts were quantitatively analyzed. All these results showed that xfOCM could be used as a non-invasive and sensitive monitoring method for the early detection of deficient islet grafts in the ACE with potential applications to human subjects. (c) 2022 Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Optica Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

Pancreatic islets are crucial for glucose homeostasis and their dysfunction is closely related to diabetes. Islet transplantation into the anterior chamber of the eye (ACE) has been developed for in vivo islet study and diabetes treatment. This study demonstrates that optical coherence microscopy (OCM) can be used as a non-invasive and sensitive monitoring method for the early detection of deficient islet grafts in ACE.