Early Stage Chick Embryonic Heart Outflow Tract Flow Measurement Using High Speed 4D Optical Coherence Tomography

The measurement of blood-plasma absolute velocity distributions with high spatial and temporal resolution in vivo is important for research on early stage embryo heart development. We introduce a novel method to measure absolute velocity of blood flow of chicken embryo (stage HH18) outflow tract based on high speed spectral domain Optical coherence tomography. Firstly, 4D scan was performed on chicken embryo heart in vivo. Secondly, we reconstructed the 4D raw structural image data and to obtain the orientation of outflow tract at maximum expansion, thus we got the flow direction of the blood assuming flow was parallel to the blood vessel. Finally, absolute flow velocity was calculated based on the direction information and Doppler OCT message. Using this method, we compared flow velocity profiles at different positions within the embryo OFT.