Speckle variance OCT imaging of the vasculature in live mammalian embryos

Live imaging of normal and abnormal vascular development in mammalian embryos is important tool in embryonic research, which can potentially contribute to understanding, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular birth defects. Here, we used speckle variance analysis of swept source optical coherence tomography (OCT) data sets acquired from live mouse embryos to reconstruct the 3-D structure of the embryonic vasculature. Both Doppler OCT and speckle variance algorithms were used to reconstruct the vascular structure. The results demonstrates that speckle variance imaging provides more accurate representation of the vascular structure, as it is not sensitive to the blood flow direction, while the Doppler OCT imaging misses blood flow component perpendicular to the beam direction. These studies suggest that speckle variance imaging is a promising tool to study vascular development in cultured mouse embryos.