Umeå Centre for Molecular Medicine, Umeå, Sweden.
Methods Mol Biol. 2023;2592:1-19. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2807-2_1.
The rodent pancreas is the prevalent model system for preclinical diabetes research. However, due to the compound endocrine-exocrine organization of the gland, with the endocrine islets of Langerhans scattered by the thousands throughout the much greater exocrine parenchyma, stereological assessments of endocrine cell mass, commonly insulin-producing ß-cells, are exceedingly challenging. In recent years, optical mesoscopic imaging techniques such as optical projection tomography (OPT) and light sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) have seen dramatic developments, enabling 3D visualization of fluorescently labeled cells in mm- to cm-sized tissues with μm resolution. Here we present a protocol for 3D visualization and "absolute" quantitative assessments of, for example, islet mass throughout the volume of rodent pancreata with maintained spatial context.
啮齿动物胰腺是临床前糖尿病研究的主要模型系统。然而，由于该腺体的内分泌-外分泌复合组织，胰岛数千个分散在更大的外分泌实质中，内分泌细胞质量的体视学评估，通常是产生胰岛素的β细胞，极具挑战性。近年来，光学介观成像技术（如光学投影断层扫描（OPT）和光片荧光显微镜（LSFM））取得了显著发展，能够以毫米至厘米大小的组织实现具有 μm 分辨率的荧光标记细胞的 3D 可视化。在这里，我们提出了一种方案，用于在保持空间背景的情况下，对例如整个啮齿动物胰腺体积中的胰岛质量进行 3D 可视化和“绝对”定量评估。
