Optical clearing imaging assisted evaluation of urokinase thrombolytic therapy on cerebral vessels with different sizes

Dongyu Li; Lu Deng; Zhengwu Hu; Yusha Li; Tingting Yu; Xiang Zhong; Jingtan Zhu; Dan Zhu

doi:10.1364/BOE.457912

Optical clearing imaging assisted evaluation of urokinase thrombolytic therapy on cerebral vessels with different sizes

Biomed Opt Express. 2022 May 6;13(6):3243-3258. doi: 10.1364/BOE.457912. eCollection 2022 Jun 1.

Authors

Dongyu Li^{1

2

3}, Lu Deng^{1

2

3}, Zhengwu Hu^{1

2

3}, Yusha Li^{1

2

3}, Tingting Yu^{1

2

3}, Xiang Zhong^{1

2

3}, Jingtan Zhu^{1

2

3}, Dan Zhu^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
² MoE Key Laboratory for Biomedical Photonics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430074, China.
³ Optics Valley Laboratory, Hubei 430074, China.

Abstract

Ischemic stroke is caused by occlusion of the blood vessels in the brain, where intravenous thrombolytic therapy is the most effective treatment. Urokinase is a commonly used drug for intravenous thrombolytic therapy, while the effect of vessel size has not been thoroughly studied on urokinase. In this work, using the thrombin-combined photothrombosis model and craniotomy-free skull optical clearing window, we studied the recanalization of different cortical vessels after urokinase treatment. The results demonstrated that, compared to small vessels in distal middle cerebral artery (MCA) and large MCA, urokinase has the best therapeutic effect on secondary branches of MCA. This study holds potential to provide references for the clinical applications of urokinase.