In vivo imaging of hemodynamics and oxygen metabolism in acute focal cerebral ischemic rats with laser speckle imaging and functional photoacoustic microscopy.

Stroke is a devastating disease. The changes in cerebral hemodynamics and oxygen metabolism associated with stroke play an important role in pathophysiology study. But the changes were difficult to describe with a single imaging modality. Here the changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral blood volume (CBV), and oxygen saturation (SO2) were yielded with laser speckle imaging (LSI) and photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) during and after 3-h acute focal ischemic rats. These hemodynamic measures were further synthesized to deduce the changes in oxygen extraction fraction (OEF). The results indicate that all the hemodynamics except CBV had rapid declines within 40-min occlusion of middle cerebral artery (MCAO). CBV in arteries and veins first increased to the maximum value of 112.42 ± 36.69% and 130.58 ± 31.01% by 15 min MCAO; then all the hemodynamics had a persistent reduction with small fluctuations during the ischemic. When ischemia lasted for 3 h, CBF in arteries, veins decreased to 17 ± 14.65%, 24.52 ± 20.66%, respectively, CBV dropped to 62 ± 18.56% and 59 ± 18.48%. And the absolute SO2 decreased by 40.52 ± 22.42% and 54.24 ± 11.77%. After 180-min MCAO, the changes in hemodynamics and oxygen metabolism were also quantified. The study suggested that combining LSI and PAM provides an attractive approach for stroke detection in small animal studies.