Optical Imaging of Plaque Formation

Doctor Brian Bacskai discusses how his group uses optical image to record plaque formation in Alzheimer's-type mice.

Our techniques rely on imaging directly; so watching what astrocytes do and what the senile plaques or neurofibrillary tangles are doing in the brain of living animals. This exploits the use of transgenic mice that develop some of these histopathological features in the brain. They are only models of Alzheimer’s disease but they can tell us how these particular pathways affect neuronal and astroglial structure and function. The technique is based on optical imaging using multi-photon microscopy, which is really just a fancy way of using a microscope to see inside an intact, living mouse brain. There we can watch astrocytic cell structure and function over time in response to and in association with senile plaques for instance.