In vivo imaging of a single erythrocyte with high-resolution photoacoustic microscopy

Abstract

In this letter, we reported a high-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) to image erythrocytes and blood vessels. The developed system had the ability to provide a lateral resolution of 1.0 μm at the wavelength of 532 nm with a × 10 objective. First, we used a sharp edge to measure the lateral resolution of the PAM and testified the stability with carbon fibers. Then, using this system, in vivo blood vessels and capillaries of a mouse ear, even a single erythrocyte can be clearly imaged. There was a pair of accompanying venule and arteriole, whose detailed and further complicated branches can be clearly identified. And likely red blood cells (RBCs) arrayed one by one in microvasculature was also shown. The experimental results demonstrate that the high-resolution PAM has potential clinical applications for imaging of erythrocytes and blood vessels.

Keywords

in vivo / photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) / erythrocyte / microvasculature

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Nos. 2011CB910402 and 2010CB732602), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61331001, 61361160414, 81127004 and 11104087), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20114407120001), and the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (Nos. S2013020012646 and S2013040016419).

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg