STUDYING ALTERNATING-SIGN STRAIN FIELDS DURING OPTICAL CLEARING OF BIOLOGICAL TISSUES BY OPTICAL COHERENCE ELASTOGRAPHY

Abstract

Liquid optical clearing agents (OCAs) are able to decrease fluctuations in the refractive
index of biological tissues, reduce the optical scattering and significantly improve the
penetration depth of optical fields used for diagnostics. However, hyperosmolarity of
OCAs may cause certain side effects during the OCA penetration in the tissue by
disturbing its integrity that can be connected not only with collagen dissociation or
general toxicity of the used agent, but also with mechanical deformations associated
with diffusion of hyperosmotic agents and affecting matrix and cells of the tissue. To
reveal and characterize the rapid and locally distributed alterations in tissue mechanics
is challenging, so that such effects of hyperosmiotic OCAs are poorly studied. The
present study is based on visualization of dynamics of strain fields by phase-resolved
optical coherence elastography. This technique made it possible to show that in nonequilibrium regime of tissue impregnations with OCAs of various concentrations, the
osmotically-induced dynamic strain fields are generated. The sign and amplitude of the
observed strains are dependent on the OCA concentration and tissue contents, in
particular, the presence of charged macromolecules, such as proteoglycans of cartilage.

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Speaker

Alexandrovskaya Yulia
Institute of Photon Technologies, Federal Scientific Research Center “Crystallography and Photonics”, Russian Academy of Sciences
Russia

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