ACCURATELY DETERMINING PROPAGATION VELOCITY OF CORTICAL SPREADING DEPRESSION IN RATS BY OPTICAL INTRINSIC SIGNAL IMAGING

Cortical spreading depression(CSD)is a wave of neuronal and glial depolarization that propagates across the cortex at a rate of 2–5mm/min accompanied by reversible electroencephalogram(EEG)suppression,a negative shift of direct current(DC)potential,and change of optical intrinsic signals(OIS).Propagation velocity of CSD is an important parameter used to study this phenomenon.It is commonly determined in an electrophysiological way that measures the time required for a CSD wave to pass along two electrodes.Since the electrophysiology technique fails to reveal the spreading pattern of CSD,velocity calculated in this manner might be inaccurate.In this study,we combined the electrophysiological recording and OIS imaging(OISI)for detecting changes in DC potential and OIS during CSD simultaneously.An optical method based on OISI to determine the CSD velocity,which is measured by generating a series of regions of interest(ROI)perpendicular to the advancing wavefront along propagation direction of CSD at different time points and then dividing by the distance between ROIs over time,is presented.Comparison of the accuracy of the two approaches in determining the CSD velocity is made as well.The average rate of 33 CSDs is 3.52±0.87mm/min by use of the optical method and 4.36±1.65mm/min by use of the electrophysiological method.Because of the information about spreading pattern of CSD provided optically,the velocity determined by OISI is of smaller deviation and higher accuracy.

Separation of cortical arteries and veins in optical neurovascular imaging

Separation of arteries and veins in the cerebral cortex is of significant importance in the studies of cortical hemodynamics,such as the changes of cerebral blood flow,perfusion or oxygen con-centration in arteries and veins under different pathological and physiological conditions.Yet the cerebral vessel segmentation and vessel-type separation are challenging due to the complexity of cortical vessel characteristics and low spatial signal-to-noise ratio.In this work,we presented an effective full-field method to differentiate arteries and veins in cerebral cortex using dual-modal optical imaging technology including laser speckle imaging(LSI)and optical intrinsic signals(OIS)imaging.The raw contrast images were acquired by LSI and processed with enhanced laser speckle contrast analysis(eLASCA),algorithm.The vascular pattern was extracted and seg-mented using region growing algorithm from the eLASCA-based LSI.Meanwhile,OIS imageswere acquired altermatively with 630 and 870 nm to obtain an oxy hemoglobin concentration mapover cerebral cortex.Then the separation of arteries and veins was accomplished by Otsuthreshold segmentation algorithm based on the OIS information and segmentation of LSI.Finally,the segmentation and separation performances were assessed using area overlap measure(AOM).The segmentation and separation of cerebral vessels in cortical optical imaging have great potential applications in full-field cerebral hemodynamics monitoring and pathological study of cerebral vascular diseases,as well as in clinical intraoperative monitoring.

EFFECTS OF NAAG AND MPEP ON RAT CORTICAL SPREADING DEPRESSION

Cortical spreading depression(CSD)is a pathophysiological phenomenon.There are sufficient evidences to prove that CSD plays an important role in some neurological disorders.However,exact mechanisms of its initiation and propagation are still unclear.Previous studies showed that glutamate receptors could be concerned with CSD,but those studies were mostly performed oriented to ionotropic glutamate receptors(iGluRs).There is relatively little report about effects of metabotropic glutamate receptors(mGluRs)on CSD.Here,we applied optical intrinsic signal imaging(OISI)combined with direct current(DC)potential recording to examine influences of some mGluRs antagonist(or agonist)on CSD propagation in rat’s brain,to indirectly validate actions of some mGluRs on CSD.We found that N-acetyl-l-aspartyl-l-glutamate(NAAG,an agonist at mGluR3)inhibited the propagation of CSD,and the inhibition was gradually developed with time.However,6-methyl-2-phenylethynyl-pyridine(MPEP,an antagonist of mGluR5)did not produce any significant alterations with the CSD propagation.Our findings suggest that mGluR3 could play an important role in the CSD propagation,but the activity of mGluR5 was comparatively weak.These findings can help to understand the propagation mechanism of CSD,and consider the therapy of some neurological diseases involved with CSD.

DETECTING CEREBRAL ARTERIES AND VEINS:FROM LARGE TO SMALL

In this paper,a model-based reconstruction technique is proposed to simultaneously measure the relative deoxyhemoglobin concentration and the relative blood flow velocity in cerebral cortex.With the help of this model-based reconstruction technique,artifacts due to nonuniform laser illumination and curvature of cortex are efficiently corrected.The results of relative deoxyhemoglobin concentration and relative blood flow velocity are then used to detect and distinguish cerebral arteries and veins.In an experimental study on rat,cerebral blood vessels are segmented from the reconstructed blood flow image by Otsu multiple threshold method.Afterwards,arteries and veins are distinguished by a simple fuzzy criterion based on the information of relative deoxyhemoglobin concentration.