Full-field optical coherence tomography: novel imaging technique for extemporaneous high-resolution analysis of mucosal architecture in human gut biopsies

Abstract

Full-field optical coherence tomography (FFOCT) is an imaging technique of biological tissue based on tissue light reflectance analysis. We evaluated the feasibility of imaging fresh digestive mucosal biopsies after a quick mounting procedure (5 min) using two distinct modalities of FFOCT. In static FFOCT mode, we gained high-resolution images of general gut tissue-specific architecture, such as oesophageal papillae, gastric pits, duodenal villi and colonic crypts. In dynamic FFOCT mode, we imaged individual epithelial cells of the mucosal lining with a cellular or subcellular resolution and identified cellular components of the lamina propria. FFOCT represents a promising dye-free imaging tool for on-site analysis of gut tissue remodelling.

Visualizing enteric nervous system activity through dye-free dynamic full-field optical coherence tomography

“…In D-FFOCT, the images of selected area are acquired over time allowing analysis of the movements in each voxel, and thus, providing additional contrast that enables resolving cells and nucleus. Using this approach, we were previously able to identify individual epithelial cells along the human gut 36 . Here, we have analyzed the tissue samples by D-FFOCT to determine whether this technique can be used to identify individual cells within the myenteric ganglia.…”

“…The cellular mechanisms underlying temporal fluctuations of the OCT signals also remain unknown but changes in cellular metabolic activity might be partially responsible as the inhibition of mitochondrial activity using rotenone, or of glycolysis using 2-deoxy-D-glucose significantly reduced the OCT signal intensity 26 . Interestingly, individual epithelial or immune cells which could not be identified individually by FFOCT, could be visualized by D-FFOCT 36 . This is encouraging but to date, nothing is known about the ability of D-FFOCT to image the ENS or the biological mechanisms underlying the D-FFOCT signals from the ENS cells.…”

Methods and applications of full-filed optical coherence tomography: a review

“…As shown in Figs. 11(a) – 11(d) , the reported applications include, but are not limited to, the discrimination of benign and malignant tissues of skin cancer, 35 , 103 , 105 breast invasive ductal cancer, 102 , 106 head and neck cancer, 104 as well as optical biopsy of intestinal tissues, 107 , 108 detection of esophageal mucosa, liver, and gastric mucosa. 86 , 102 , 106 , 109 – 113 Besides, FF-OCT incorporating artificial intelligence can benefit deep mining of the abundant image data, which can reduce the difficulty of human eye recognition, improve the accuracy of information recognition, and promote the efficiency of FF-OCT histological diagnosis.…”

Single-shot off-axis full-field optical coherence tomography

“…Furthermore, with a low-spatial-coherence illumination, time-domain FF-OCT has the advantage of reducing the generation of optical aberrations 5,6 and of eliminating cross talks ( i.e ., interferences between adjacent pixels) 7 . With a typical micrometer resolution 8 , a low speckle dependence 9 and a high sensibility 10 , FF-OCT has become attractive in many biomedical applications such as optical biopsy in the human gut 11 , the study of intracellular motility in the retina 12 or high-resolution elasticity measurement in tissues 13,14 .…”