Label-free intratissue activity imaging of alveolar organoids with dynamic optical coherence tomography
Rion Morishita, Toshio Suzuki, Pradipta Mukherjee, Ibrahim Abd El-Sadek, Yiheng Lim, Antonia Lichtenegger, Shuichi Makita, Kiriko Tomita, Yuki Yamamoto, Tetsuharu Nagamoto, Yoshiaki Yasuno
Abstract
cell culture emulating human organs. We applied 3D dynamic optical coherence tomography (DOCT) to visualize the intratissue and intracellular activities of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs)-derived alveolar organoids in normal and fibrosis models. 3D DOCT data were acquired with an 840-nm spectral domain optical coherence tomography with axial and lateral resolutions of 3.8 µm (in tissue) and 4.9 µm, respectively. The DOCT images were obtained by the logarithmic-intensity-variance (LIV) algorithm, which is sensitive to the signal fluctuation magnitude. The LIV images revealed cystic structures surrounded by high-LIV borders and mesh-like structures with low LIV. The former may be alveoli with a highly dynamics epithelium, while the latter may be fibroblasts. The LIV images also demonstrated the abnormal repair of the alveolar epithelium.