Assessment of Brain Functional Activity Using a Miniaturized Head-Mounted Scanning Photoacoustic Imaging System in Awake and Freely Moving Rats.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the relationship between brain function and natural behavior remains a significant challenge in neuroscience because there are very few convincing imaging/recording tools available for the evaluation of awake and freely moving animals. Here, we employed a miniaturized head-mounted scanning photoacoustic imaging (hmPAI) system to image real-time cortical dynamics. A compact photoacoustic (PA) probe based on four in-house optical fiber pads and a single custom-made 48-MHz focused ultrasound transducer was designed to enable focused dark-field PA imaging, and miniature linear motors were included to enable two-dimensional (2D) scanning. The total dimensions and weight of the proposed hmPAI system are only approximately 50 × 64 × 48 mm and 58.7 g (excluding cables). Our ex vivo p

SUBMITTER: Wang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8615926 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature