Quantitative imaging of three-dimensional fiber orientation in the human brain via two illumination angles using polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography
Year: 2023
Type: preprint
Abstract: The accurate measurement of three-dimensional (3D) fiber orientation in the brain is crucial for reconstructing fiber pathways and studying their involvement in neurological diseases. Optical imaging methods such as polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) provide important tools to directly quantify fiber orientation at micrometer resolution. However, brain imaging based on the optic axis by PS-OCT so far has been limited to two-dimensional in-plane orientation, preventing the comprehensive study of connectivity in 3D. In this work, we present a novel method to obtain the 3D fiber orientation in full angular space with only two illumination angles. We measure the optic axis orientation and the apparent birefringence by PS-OCT from a normal and a 15 deg tilted illumination, and then apply a computational method yielding the 3D optic axis orientation and true birefringence. We verify that our method accurately recovers a large range of through-plane orientations from -85 deg to 85 deg with a high angular precision. We further present 3D fiber orientation maps of entire coronal sections of human cerebrum and brainstem with 10 μm in-plane resolution, revealing unprecedented details of fiber configurations. We envision that further development of our method will open a promising avenue towards large-scale 3D fiber axis mapping in the human brain and other complex fibrous tissues at microscopic level.
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Institutes of Health, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Center for Research Resources
Awards: G1360098495, G2310474037, Building a pathology-validated neuroimaging tool for Alzheimer's Disease, G2932629777, Segmenting Brain Structures for Neurological Disorders, Inferring in Vivo Cytoarchitectural Borders in the Medial Temporal Lobe, The Human Connectome Project (HCP), Establishing cellular-validated standards for parcellating hippocampal subfields in aging and Alzheimer's disease, OCTology: histology using optical coherence tomography, A Connectome-Based Clinical Trial Platform to Promote Early Recovery of Consciousness after Traumatic Coma, Nobrainer: A robust and validated neural network tool suite for imagers, Automatic segmentation of the infant brainstem using optical coherence tomography, Computeserver Structural &Functional Image Analysis, G6296793415, MRI, Genetics & Cognitive Precursors of AD and Dementia, Open-source software for multi-scale mapping of the human brain, Software Tools for Automated Modeling of White Matter Fascicles from Diffusion MR, G8711093347, A Storage Area Network for Structural and Functional Image Analysis, G9000012841, G9000032172, G9000052245, G9000090174, G9000111245, G9000118446, G9000130061, G9000148167, G9000163195, G9000185783, G9000193426, G9000210487, G9000253598, G9000256714, G9000300321, G9000339556, VCID Biomarkers Coordinating Center, FreeSurfer Development, Maintenance, and Hardening, Establishing cellular-validated standards for parcellating hippocampal subfields in aging and Alzheimer's disease, BRAIN CONNECTS: Mapping Connectivity of the Human Brainstem in a Nuclear Coordinate System, BRAIN CONNECTS: The center for Large-scale Imaging of Neural Circuits (LINC), Silicon Graphics Prism Extreme 128P/1TB
OpenAlex ID: W4387895460