We have developed a multi-functional laser speckle imaging system, which can be operated in both the surface illumination laser speckle contrast imaging (SI-LSCI) mode and the line scan laser speckle contrast imaging (LS-LSCI) mode. The system has been applied to imaging the chicken embryos to visualize both the blood flow and morphological details of the vasculature. The experimental results demonstrated that LS-LSCI is capable of detecting and quantifying blood flow in blood vessels smaller and deeper than those detectable by conventional SI-LSCI. Furthermore, the line scan mode is also capable of producing depth-resolved absorption-based morphological images of tissue, augmenting flow-based functional images.

Background: Biomechanical stimuli are known to be important to cardiac development, but the mechanisms are not fully understood. Here, we pharmacologically disrupted the biomechanical environment of wild-type zebrafish embryonic hearts for an extended duration and investigated the consequent effects on cardiac function, morphological development, and gene expression. Results: Myocardial contractility was significantly diminished or abolished in zebrafish embryonic hearts treated for 72 hours from 2 dpf with 2,3-butanedione monoxime (BDM). Image-based flow simulations showed that flow wall shear stresses were abolished or significantly reduced with high oscillatory shear indices. At 5 dpf, after removal of BDM, treated embryonic hearts were maldeveloped, having disrupted cardiac looping, smaller ventricles, and poor cardiac function (lower ejected flow, bulboventricular regurgitation, lower contractility, and slower heart rate). RNA sequencing of cardiomyocytes of treated hearts revealed 922 significantly up-regulated genes and 1,698 significantly down-regulated genes. RNA analysis and subsequent qPCR and histology validation suggested that biomechanical disruption led to an up-regulation of inflammatory and apoptotic genes and down-regulation of ECM remodeling and ECM-receptor interaction genes. Biomechanics disruption also prevented the formation of ventricular trabeculation along with notch1 and erbb4a down-regulation. Conclusions: Extended disruption of biomechanical stimuli caused maldevelopment, and potential genes responsible for this are identified.

Laser speckle imaging has been widely used for in-vivo visualization of blood perfusion in biological tissues. However, existing laser speckle imaging techniques suffer from limited quantification accuracy and spatial resolution. Here we report a novel design and implementation of a powerful laser speckle imaging platform to solve the two critical limitations. The core technique of our platform is a combination of line scan confocal microscopy with laser speckle autocorrelation imaging, which is termed Line Scan Laser Speckle Autocorrelation Imaging (LS-LSAI). The technical advantages of LS-LSAI include high spatial resolution (~4.4 μm) for visualizing and quantifying blood flow in microvessels, as well as videorate imaging speed for tracing dynamic flow.

We have theoretically verified that, compared with the aperture shapes of previous research, combining two stripe-shaped apertures in a confocal microscope with a finite-sized pinhole improves the axial resolution to a certain extent. Because different stripe shapes cause different effects, we also investigated the relationships among resolution, shapes, pinhole size, and the signal-to-background ratio.

Line-scan focal modulation microscopy (LSFMM) is an emerging imaging technique that affords high imaging speed and good optical sectioning at the same time. We present a systematic investigation into optimal design of the pupil filter for LSFMM in an attempt to achieve the best performance in terms of spatial resolutions, optical sectioning, and modulation depth. Scalar diffraction theory was used to compute light propagation and distribution in the system and theoretical predictions on system performance, which were then compared with experimental results.