School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Graduate School, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea.
Department of Materials and Mechanical Technology, Faculty of Technology, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Pitipana, Homagama, Sri Lanka.
Technol Health Care. 2022;30(S1):61-70. doi: 10.3233/THC-228006.
Ticks are known as the representatives of hematophagous arachnids. They cause various tick-borne diseases, such as severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) and Lyme disease. To understand the mechanism of virus infection caused by ticks, morphology for the anatomical characteristics of crucial organs has been widely studied in acarological fields. The conventional methods used for tick observation have inevitable limitations. Dissection is the standard method to obtain the morphological information, and complex microscopy methods were utilized alternatively.
The study goal is to obtain the morphological information of ticks in different growth stages non-invasively.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is employed to acquire structural images of various internal organs without damage for observing the growth process of larva, nymph, and adult in Haemaphysalis longicornis ticks in real-time.
Various internal organs, such as salivary glands, rectal sac, genital aperture, and anus, were well-visualized by the OCT enface and cross-sectional images, and the variation in size of these organs in each growth stage was compared quantitatively.
Based on the obtained results, we confirmed the potential feasibility of OCT as a non-destructive real-time tool for morphological studies in acarology. Further research using OCT for acarological applications can include monitoring the growth process of ticks in terms of structural changes and investigating morphological differences between normal and virus-infected tick specimens.
蜱虫是吸血蛛形纲动物的代表。它们会引起各种蜱传疾病，如严重发热伴血小板减少综合征（SFTS）和莱姆病。为了了解蜱虫引起的病毒感染机制，在节肢动物学领域广泛研究了关键器官的解剖特征形态学。传统的蜱虫观察方法存在不可避免的局限性。解剖是获取形态信息的标准方法，而替代方法则是复杂的显微镜方法。
本研究旨在非侵入性地获取不同生长阶段蜱虫的形态信息。
采用光学相干断层扫描（OCT）获取长角血蜱幼虫、若虫和成虫不同生长阶段内部器官的结构图像，实时观察蜱虫的生长过程。
OCT 横断面和断层图像清晰地显示了各种内部器官，如唾液腺、直肠囊、生殖器开口和肛门，并且比较了各生长阶段这些器官大小的变化。
基于获得的结果，我们证实了 OCT 作为一种非破坏性的实时形态学研究工具在节肢动物学中的潜在可行性。使用 OCT 进行蜱虫学应用的进一步研究可以包括监测蜱虫生长过程中的结构变化，并研究正常和感染病毒的蜱虫标本之间的形态差异。
