Presentation Details
| High-Resolution Optical Imaging Distinguishes Olfactory and Respiratory Epithelium in Mouse and Human Nasal Tissue Liam Lee1, Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt2, Guillermo Tearney2, Eric Holbrook3, Brian Lin1. 1Tufts University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Boston, MA, USA.2Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.3Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, MA, USA |
Abstract
Olfactory dysfunction affects up to 10% of the population and is associated with reduced quality of life and early cognitive decline, yet visualization of the intact olfactory epithelium (OE) in human subjects has been elusive. Current diagnostic and prognostic assessment for smell loss, as well as research methodology, rely on psychophysical testing or small epithelial biopsies that sample only limited regions of the nasal mucosa without ability to reliably obtain OE as opposed to adjacent areas of respiratory epithelium. A minimally invasive method for identifying and assessing the extent of OE within the nasal cavity would provide a major advancement in studying human olfactory disorders. Here, we demonstrate that dynamic micro-optical coherence tomography (dµOCT) can be used as a label-free approach for high-resolution assessment of the OE ex vivo on mouse and human olfactory tissue. Using transgenic mouse tissue to provide a gold standard reference, we identify clear boundaries between olfactory and respiratory epithelium. We then demonstrate using live human explant tissue the ability of dµOCT to not only distinguish between olfactory and respiratory epithelium but also resolve olfactory sensory neurons and duct/gland units. These findings demonstrate that dµOCT can provide reliable identification of OE in vivo. This approach establishes the proof of concept for using dµOCT as an in situ, minimally invasive tool to map human olfactory mucosa, improve biopsy targeting, and enable objective, quantifiable longitudinal assessment of olfactory epithelial health in disease and during recovery.
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