Evaluation of human kidney for transplantation using polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

Kidney transplantation faces a worldwide shortage due to the lack of reliable assessment for screening qualified donor kidneys for transplantation. We evaluated the feasibility of using polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) to provide a score map covering the entire surface of a kidney to evaluate the pre-transplantation kidney quality. Multiple histology staining and two-photon microscopy (TPM) were used to provide verification standards for microstructures, tissue distributions, and fibrosis in PS-OCT imaging. Our results indicated that PS-OCT was a reliable method for noninvasively imaging kidney microstructure and fibrosis matching the pretransplant scoring system for assessing the quality of pre-transplantation kidneys.