Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy to Assess Cerebral Blood Flow in a Mouse Model

Abstract

Source: Brothers, R. O., et al. Systems Analysis of the Neuroinflammatory and Hemodynamic Response to Traumatic Brain Injury. J. Vis. Exp. (2022)

In this video, we demonstrate the diffuse correlation spectroscopy technique to measure cerebral blood flow in a mouse model of mild traumatic brain injury.

Protocol

All procedures involving animal models have been reviewed by the local institutional animal care committee and the JoVE veterinary review board 1. Assessment of cerebral blood flow with diffuse correlation spectroscopy DCS data acquisition Remove hair on the scalp. Because DCS works best in the absence of hair, it is necessary to remove fur on the head prior to the start of experiments. Typically, hair removal is done 1-3 days prior to …

Representative Results

Figure 1: Measurement of cerebral blood flow by Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy. (A) An optical sensor is gently manually held over the right hemisphere to measure blood flow in an anesthetized mouse. (B) Representative sensor placement on the right hemisphere. The outline of the sensor is represented as a dashed black rectangle, and the location of the source and detector fiber…

Materials

Depilatory cream	Amazon	Nair
DiH2O	VWR	VWRL0200-1000
Hardware Autocorrelator Board	www.correlator.com	Flex05-8ch
Isoflurane 250 mL	MED-VET INTERNATIONAL	RXISO-250
Kimwipe (11.2 x 21.3 cm)	VWR	21905-026
Laboratory vortex mixer	VWR	10153-838
LabView	National Instruments	LabVIEW
Luminex 200, HTS, FLEXMAP 3D, or MAGPIX with xPONENT software	Luminex Corporation
R Programming Language
RStudio	www.rstudio.com
Sonicator
1 m acrylic guide tube	McMaster-Carr	49035K85
4 photon counting avalanche photodiode	Perkin-Elmer	SPCM-AQ4C-IO
400 um multimode source fiber	Thorlabs Inc.	FT-400-EMT
54 g bolt	Ace Hardware		0.95 cm basic body diameter, 2 cm head diameter, 10.2 cm length
780 nm single mode detector fiber	Thorlabs Inc.	780HP
852 nm long-coherence length laser	TOPTICA Photonics	iBeam smart