Quantitative measurement of blood velocity in zebrafish with optical vector field tomography

Abstract

Microscopy techniques can readily visualize the finest details of embryo vasculature, but still lack to provide a complete three-dimensional representation of blood flow parameters. We present an in-vivo 3D imaging technique, able to reconstruct the blood cell velocity vector over a large volume of zebrafish embryos. This low cost and relatively simple technique is exploited to quantitatively assess blood velocity in the zebrafish tail at different stages of development.

Keywords: cardiovascular system; microscopy; optical tomography; velocimetry; zebrafish.