Experimental Research Center for Normal and Pathological Aging, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, Craiova, Romania.
Department of Biophysics, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Craiova, Craiova, Romania.
Microsc Res Tech. 2021 Mar;84(3):422-431. doi: 10.1002/jemt.23599. Epub 2020 Oct 3.
Worldwide elderly traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients tend to become an increasing burden to the society. Thus, a faster and less expensive way of evaluating TBI victims is needed. In the present study we investigated if optical coherence tomography (OCT) could be used as such a method. By using an animal model, we established if OCT can detect cortical changes in the acute phase of a penetrating TBI, in young (5-7 months) and old (20-22 months) rats. Due to the long-term evolution of TBI's, we wanted to investigate to what extent OCT could detect changes within the cortex in the chronic phase. Adult (7-12 months) male rats were used. Surprisingly, OCT imaging of the normal hemisphere was able to discriminate age-related differences in the mean gray values (MGV) of recorded pixels (p = .032). Furthermore, in the acute phase of TBI, OCT images recorded at 24 hr after the injury showed differences between the apparent damaged area of young and aged animals. Changes of MGV and skewness were only recorded 48 hr after injury. Monitoring the chronical evolution of the TBI with OCT revealed changes over time exceeding the normal range recorded for MGV, skewness and kurtosis, 14 and 21 days after TBI. Although in the present study we still used an extremely invasive approach, as technology improves, less invasive and non-harmful ways of recording OCT may allow for an objective way to detect changes within the brain structure after brain injuries.
全球老年创伤性脑损伤 (TBI) 患者给社会带来的负担日益加重。因此，需要一种更快、更经济的方法来评估 TBI 患者。在本研究中，我们探讨了光学相干断层扫描 (OCT) 是否可作为一种方法。通过使用动物模型，我们确定 OCT 是否可以检测到年轻（5-7 个月）和老年（20-22 个月）大鼠穿透性 TBI 急性期的皮质变化。由于 TBI 的长期演变，我们想研究 OCT 在慢性期内检测皮质变化的程度。成年（7-12 个月）雄性大鼠被用于实验。令人惊讶的是，正常半球的 OCT 成像能够区分记录像素的平均灰度值（MGV）的年龄相关差异（p =.032）。此外，在 TBI 的急性期，伤后 24 小时记录的 OCT 图像显示出年轻和老年动物明显受损区域之间的差异。MGV 和偏度的变化仅在受伤后 48 小时记录。用 OCT 监测 TBI 的慢性演变显示，在 TBI 后 14 和 21 天，MGV、偏度和峰度的记录超出了正常范围，表明发生了随时间变化的改变。尽管在本研究中我们仍使用了极其侵入性的方法，但随着技术的进步，使用侵入性更小、无害的 OCT 记录方式可能为检测脑损伤后大脑结构内的变化提供一种客观的方法。
