Newts are an exquisite salamander with unique capability of regenerating most of its tissues and organ. Its lens among all other body parts are the most significant, given when original lens is damaged or lost, a new fully functional lens would be regenerated regardless of age or repeated damage. Our research group has been focused on studying this biological process of lens regeneration to eventual human application. Our past understanding were obtained from only ex-vivo imaging technologies require extensive tissue processing, such as histological analysis, showing the morphological and cellular changes at fixed time point. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) are an powerful diagnostic tool for ophthalmology on human ocular diseases, it implement the idea of in-vivo, non-invasive imaging that does not need animal sacrifice. We employed a spectral-domain OCT to in vivo imaging the newts lens regeneration with 37 lentectomized newt over the course of 60-80 days. Histology were collected according to verify the accuracy of OCT. In our result, we have demonstrated the that OCT imaging is capable identify the key features observed in corresponding histological images. Lens volume measurements from three-dimensional OCT images showed that the regenerating lens size increased linearly until 60 days post-lentectomy. OCT imaging allowed us to track the entire process of newt lens regeneration in vivo for the first time in the field. We were able to volumetrically quantify and visualize the lens regeneration process using three-dimensional OCT images. Our results establish OCT as an in vivo imaging modality to track/analyze the entire lens regeneration process from the same animal, which reduces animal sacrifice and advance our understanding of this dynamic process.
Author: Junfan Chen
Faculty Advisor: Katia Del Rio-Tsonis, Biology
Graduate Student Advisor: George Tsissios, Biology
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