Quantitative optical coherence microscopy of neuron morphology in human entorhinal cortex

The size and shape of neurons are important features indicating aging and the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the significant advances of optical microscopy, quantitative analysis of the neuronal features in the human brain remains largely incomplete. Traditional histology on thin s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in neuroscience 2023-04, Vol.17, p.1074660-1074660
Main Authors: Wang, Hui, Gong, Dayang, Augustinack, Jean C, Magnain, Caroline
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alzheimer's disease
Brain
Brain slice preparation
cell shape
cell size
Cortex (entorhinal)
Histology
human brain
Human remains
Light microscopy
Microscopy
Morphology
Neurodegenerative diseases
neuron
Neurons
Neuroscience
optical coherence tomography (OCT)
Quantitative analysis
quantitative morphology
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Summary:The size and shape of neurons are important features indicating aging and the pathology of neurodegenerative diseases. Despite the significant advances of optical microscopy, quantitative analysis of the neuronal features in the human brain remains largely incomplete. Traditional histology on thin slices bears tremendous distortions in three-dimensional reconstruction, the magnitude of which are often greater than the structure of interest. Recently development of tissue clearing techniques enable the whole brain to be analyzed in small animals; however, the application in the human remains challenging. In this study, we present a label-free quantitative optical coherence microscopy (OCM) technique to obtain the morphological parameters of neurons in human entorhinal cortex (EC). OCM uses the intrinsic back-scattering property of tissue to identify individual neurons in 3D. The area, length, width, and orientation of individual neurons are quantified and compared between layer II and III in EC. The high-resolution mapping of neuron size, shape, and orientation shows significant differences between layer II and III neurons in EC. The results are validated by standard Nissl staining of the same samples. The quantitative OCM technique in our study offers a new solution to analyze variety of neurons and their organizations in the human brain, which opens new insights in advancing our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases.
ISSN:1662-4548
1662-453X
1662-453X
DOI:10.3389/fnins.2023.1074660