In vivo monitoring development of zebrafish embryo by optical coherence tomography

Abstract

Due to the advantages of high sensitivity, high resolution and nondestructive in vivo three-dimensional detection, optical coherence tomography has been widely studied in various fields such as biology, genetics and medicine. Zebrafish is a kind of freshwater fish, whose embryos are easy to reproduce in large numbers and have high transparency for observation. In particular, the genetic homology between zebrafish and human is as high as 70%, which makes zebrafish gradually become an excellent model for studying human development or various serious diseases. In this study, a method for continuous observation of zebrafish embryos using OCT was proposed. In this experiment, the development of zebrafish embryos before hatching (0dpf-3dpf) was continuous observed by OCT, and the proportion of yolk sac to embryo volume was extracted and quantified. The proportion of embryos collected by OCT was compared with the proportion of zebrafish embryos observed by microscope. All experiments were repeated three times. The results show that the method of quantification of zebrafish embryo development by OCT can not only observe the internal development structure of the embryo, but also calculate the volume proportion of embryo development more accurately than microscope. This method provides a more rapid and precise important means for early clinical judgment of embryo development.