Imaging of eye tumor in the mouse model of retinoblastoma with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography

Noninvasive in vivo examination of the rodent retina without sacrificing the animal is the key to being able to perform longitudinal studies. This allows the monitoring of disease progression and the response to therapies through its entire course in individual animal. A high-speed high resolution three-dimensional spectral-domain OCT is built for noncontact in vivo imaging of rodent retina. The system is able to acquire high quality 3D images of the rodent retina in 2.7 seconds (total imaging time is similar to 5 minutes). The system was tested on mice with normal retina (B6/SJLF2), mouse model for photoreceptor degeneration (Rho(-/-)), and mouse model for retinoblastoma (LHBETATAG). For the first time to our knowledge, 3D image of the tumor in retinoblastoma mouse model was successfully imaged in vivo. By segmenting the tumor boundaries in each frame of the OCT image the volume of the tumor was successfully calculated.