Detecting murine Inflammatory Bowel Disease using Optical Coherence Elastography.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Gastroenterology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Ulcerative colitis (UC), a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), affects hundreds of thousands in the US.
• Current ultrasonic techniques for colitis detection have limited spatial resolution, leading to underdiagnoses.
• Optical imaging methods like OCT offer higher resolution but do not assess biomechanical properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the potential of optical coherence elastography (OCE) for detecting IBD by quantifying colon tissue biomechanical properties.
• To assess differences in stiffness and elasticity between healthy and IBD-diseased ex vivo mouse colon tissue.

Main Methods:

• Induced elastic waves in ex vivo mouse colon tissue using a focused air-pulse.
• Detected elastic waves with a phase-stabilized swept source optical coherence elastography system.
• Calculated tissue stiffness (Young's Modulus) and analyzed phase velocity dispersion curves.

Main Results:

• Significantly different stiffness values were observed between healthy ($10.2 \pm 3.7$ kPa) and IBD-diseased ($4.9 \pm 0.3$ kPa) colon samples ($p \lt 0.05$).
• Phase velocity dispersion analysis revealed variations in high-frequency components between healthy and IBD tissues.
• OCE demonstrated distinct mechanical signatures for healthy versus IBD-affected colon tissue.

Conclusions:

• Optical coherence elastography can effectively differentiate between healthy and IBD-diseased colon tissue based on biomechanical properties.
• OCE shows promise as a noninvasive imaging modality for the detection of inflammatory bowel disease.
• Combining structural and mechanical information may improve colitis diagnosis accuracy.