Three‐dimensional morphological revealing of human placental villi with common obstetric complications via optical coherence tomography

Abstract

Placental villi play a vital role in human fetal development, acting as the bridge of material exchange between the maternal and fetal. The abnormal morphology of placental villi is closely related to placental circulation disorder and pregnancy complications. Revealing placental villi three‐dimensional (3D) morphology of common obstetric complications and healthy pregnancies provides a new perspective for studying the role of the placenta and its villi in the development of pregnancy diseases. In this study, we established a noninvasive, high‐resolution 3D imaging platform via optical coherence tomography to reveal placental villi 3D morphological information of diseased and normal placentae. For the first time, 3D morphologies of placental villous tree structures in common obstetric complications were quantitatively revealed and corresponding 3D information could visualize the morphological characteristics of the placental villous tree from a more intuitive perspective, providing helpful information to the study of fetal development, feto‐maternal material exchange, and gestational complications treatment.

Morphometric Analysis of Placental Terminal Villi, Capillaries, and Intervillous Space in Normal and Pre-Eclamptic Pregnancies

“…The transverse diameter of the terminal villi and the transverse diameter of the terminal villous capillaries were considerably smaller in group B pre-eclamptic placentae than in group A control placentae in the current study. As per documented data, the majority of the morphological alterations in the placenta in pre-eclampsia may be caused by decreased uteroplacental blood flow, which also accounts for the patho-physiological changes in internal components of the placenta (18,19). Studies have reported that the transverse diameter of terminal villi and terminal villous capillaries were significantly smaller in the pre-elamptic group than in the control group which is in parallel to current research (20,21).…”

High‐precision Drosophila heart segmentation and dynamic cardiac parameter measurement for optogenetics‐OCT‐based cardiac function research

“…Cardiac optogenetics refers to the delivery of lightsensitive proteins (opsin) to excitable heart tissue to achieve optical regulation of cardiac electrophysiological function, such as non-invasively controlling the heart rhythm [10][11][12]. Meanwhile, optical coherence tomography (OCT), a burgeoning imaging technology in the biomedicine field [13], has also been used in heart function studies based on the Drosophila model. OCT can achieve the noninvasively cross-sectional and 3D visualization of bio-tissue internal structures, with high resolution and imaging speed [14][15][16].…”