Quantitative imaging of microvascular blood flow networks in deep cortical layers by 1310 nm μODT.

There is growing interest in new neuroimage techniques that permit not only high-resolution quantification of cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFv) in capillaries, but also a large field of view to map the CBFv network dynamics. Such image capabilities are of great importance for decoding the functional difference across multiple cortical layers under stimuli. To tackle the limitation of optical penetration depth, we present a new ultrahigh-resolution optical coherence Doppler tomography (μODT) system at 1310 nm and compare it with a prior 800 nm μODT system for mouse brain 3D CBFv imaging. We show that the new 1310 nm μODT allows for dramatically increased depth (∼4 times) of quantitative CBFv imaging to 1.4 mm, thus covering the full thickness of the mouse cortex (i.e., layers I-VI). Interestingly, we show that such a unique 3D CBFv imaging capability allows identification of microcirculatory redistribution across different cortical layers resulting from repeated cocaine exposures.