Validation of an automated method for studying retinal capillary blood flow

Srividya Neriyanuri; Phillip Bedggood; R. C. Andrew Symons; and Andrew B. Metha

Validation of an automated method for studying retinal capillary blood flow

Author : Srividya Neriyanuri, Phillip Bedggood, R. C. Andrew Symons, and Andrew B. Metha Journa Name: BIOMEDICAL OPTICS EXPRESS Country : USA Volume: 15 issue: 2 Year: 2024 Views : 419

Abstract:

Two major approaches for tracking cellular motion across a range of biological tissues are the manual labelling of cells, and automated analysis of spatiotemporal information represented in a kymograph. Here we compare these two approaches for the measurement of retinal capillary flow, a particularly noisy application due to the low intrinsic contrast of single red blood cells (erythrocytes). Image data were obtained using a flood-illuminated adaptive optics ophthalmoscope at 750?nm, allowing the acquisition of flow information over several cardiac cycles which provided key information in evaluating tracking accuracy. Our results show that in addition to being much faster, the automated method is more accurate in the face of rapid flow and reduced image contrast. This study represents the first validation of commonly used kymograph approaches to capillary flow analysis.