Sundar Shruti, Jin Tian, Liu Yu-Hang, Chen Zhenyue, Reiss Michael, Kurnikov Alexey, Subochev Pavel, Razansky Daniel
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Institute for Biomedical Engineering , Faculty of Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, 8057, Switzerland.
Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8093, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):20793. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-07819-4.
Understanding the interaction between cerebral vasculature and neurons is critical for studying neurovascular processes and their roles in brain function and neurological disorders. Existing functional neuroimaging approaches face trade-offs between resolution, penetration depth, and spatiotemporal alignment, limiting their ability to comprehensively image neurovascular anatomy and function in vivo. To address this challenge, we developed a dual-modality system that combines optical-resolution optoacoustic microscopy with two-photon fluorescence microscopy. The system enables imaging of microcapillaries with submicron resolution at up to 140 μm depth and neurons beyond 300 μm depth in the mouse cortex, thus providing complementary information. Using a semi-simultaneous acquisition protocol, the system alternately captures data across time and depth planes, ensuring spatiotemporal alignment, minimizing motion artifacts, and enabling robust co-registration of multimodal datasets for comprehensive studies of neurovascular coupling in health and disease.
了解脑血管系统与神经元之间的相互作用对于研究神经血管过程及其在脑功能和神经系统疾病中的作用至关重要。现有的功能神经成像方法在分辨率、穿透深度和时空对准之间面临权衡，限制了它们在体内全面成像神经血管解剖结构和功能的能力。为了应对这一挑战，我们开发了一种双模态系统，该系统将光学分辨率光声显微镜与双光子荧光显微镜相结合。该系统能够在小鼠皮层中对深度达140μm的微毛细血管进行亚微米分辨率成像，并对深度超过300μm的神经元进行成像，从而提供互补信息。使用半同步采集协议，该系统可在时间和深度平面上交替捕获数据，确保时空对准，最大限度地减少运动伪影，并能够对多模态数据集进行稳健的配准，以便对健康和疾病状态下的神经血管耦合进行全面研究。
