A feasibility study with optical coherence tomography for brain connectome extraction

This study explores using optical coherence tomography (OCT) for brain connectome extraction. With micrometer-scale resolution and rapid imaging, OCT bridges the gap between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and light sheet microscopy (LSM). We used a customized OCT system to scan lipid-removed mouse brains, achieving partial transparency with a sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) clearing solution. The results showed the feasibility of extracting neural bundles near the corpus callosum. Strong scattering in non-lipid-removed samples obscured neural bundles, while lipid removal and partial clearing enhanced visibility. Using a simple image processing workflow, including CLAHE, Gaussian smoothing, and adaptive segmentation, we successfully extracted connectome signals. This highlights OCT's potential in neural pathway tracking with efficient processing.