3D Optical Molecular Imaging of the Rodent Pancreas by OPT and LSFM

The rodent pancreas is the prevalent model system for preclinical diabetes research. However, due to the compound endocrine-exocrine organization of the gland, with the endocrine islets of Langerhans scattered by the thousands throughout the much greater exocrine parenchyma, stereological assessments of endocrine cell mass, commonly insulin-producing ß-cells, are exceedingly challenging. In recent years, optical mesoscopic imaging techniques such as optical projection tomography (OPT) and light sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) have seen dramatic developments, enabling 3D visualization of fluorescently labeled cells in mm- to cm-sized tissues with μm resolution. Here we present a protocol for 3D visualization and "absolute" quantitative assessments of, for example, islet mass throughout the volume of rodent pancreata with maintained spatial context.