Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, United States of America.
Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States of America.
Biofabrication. 2022 Jan 24;14(2). doi: 10.1088/1758-5090/ac49d5.
Thrombosis in the circulation system can lead to major myocardial infarction and cardiovascular deaths. Understanding thrombosis formation is necessary for developing safe and effective treatments. In this work, using digital light processing (DLP)-based 3D printing, we fabricated sophisticatedmodels of blood vessels with internal microchannels that can be used for thrombosis studies. In this regard, photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) offers a unique advantage for label-free visualization of the 3D-printed vessel models, with large penetration depth and functional sensitivity. We compared the imaging performances of two PAM implementations: optical-resolution PAM and acoustic-resolution PAM, and investigated 3D-printed vessel structures with different patterns of microchannels. Our results show that PAM can provide clear microchannel structures at depths up to 3.6 mm. We further quantified the blood oxygenation in the 3D-printed vascular models, showing that thrombi had lower oxygenation than the normal blood. We expect that PAM can find broad applications in 3D printing and bioprinting forstudies of various vascular and other diseases.
循环系统中的血栓可导致严重的心肌梗死和心血管死亡。了解血栓形成对于开发安全有效的治疗方法是必要的。在这项工作中，我们使用基于数字光处理（DLP）的 3D 打印技术，制造了具有内部微通道的复杂血管模型，可用于血栓研究。在这方面，光声显微镜（PAM）为 3D 打印血管模型的无标记可视化提供了独特的优势，具有较大的穿透深度和功能灵敏度。我们比较了两种 PAM 实现方式的成像性能：光学分辨率 PAM 和声学分辨率 PAM，并研究了具有不同微通道图案的 3D 打印血管结构。我们的结果表明，PAM 可以在深度达 3.6 毫米的范围内提供清晰的微通道结构。我们进一步量化了 3D 打印血管模型中的血氧，结果表明血栓的氧合程度低于正常血液。我们预计 PAM 将在 3D 打印和生物打印领域得到广泛应用，用于研究各种血管和其他疾病。
