Doppler fluctuation spectroscopy of intracellular dynamics in living tissue

Coherent light scattering from cellular dynamics in living tissues

This review examines the biological physics of intracellular transport probed by the coherent optics of dynamic light scattering from optically thick living tissues. Cells and their constituents are in constant motion, composed of a broad range of speeds spanning many orders of magnitude that reflect the wide array of functions and mechanisms that maintain cellular health. From the organelle scale of tens of nanometers and upward in size, the motion inside living tissue is actively driven rather than thermal, propelled by the hydrolysis of bioenergetic molecules and the forces of molecular motors. Active transport can mimic the random walks of thermal Brownian motion, but mean-squared displacements are far from thermal equilibrium and can display anomalous diffusion through Lévy or fractional Brownian walks. Despite the average isotropic three-dimensional environment of cells and tissues, active cellular or intracellular transport of single light-scattering objects is often pseudo-one-dimensional, for instance as organelle displacement persists along cytoskeletal tracks or as membranes displace along the normal to cell surfaces, albeit isotropically oriented in three dimensions. Coherent light scattering is a natural tool to characterize such tissue dynamics because persistent directed transport induces Doppler shifts in the scattered light. The many frequency-shifted partial waves from the complex and dynamic media interfere to produce dynamic speckle that reveals tissue-scale processes through speckle contrast imaging and fluctuation spectroscopy. Low-coherence interferometry, dynamic optical coherence tomography, diffusing-wave spectroscopy, diffuse-correlation spectroscopy, differential dynamic microscopy and digital holography offer coherent detection methods that shed light on intracellular processes. In health-care applications, altered states of cellular health and disease display altered cellular motions that imprint on the statistical fluctuations of the scattered light. For instance, the efficacy of medical therapeutics can be monitored by measuring the changes they induce in the Doppler spectra of livingex vivocancer biopsies.

Comparative oncology chemosensitivity assay for personalized medicine using low-coherence digital holography of dynamic light scattering from cancer biopsies

Nearly half of cancer patients who receive standard-of-care treatments fail to respond to their first-line chemotherapy, demonstrating the pressing need for improved methods to select personalized cancer therapies. Low-coherence digital holography has the potential to fill this need by performing dynamic contrast OCT on living cancer biopsies treated ex vivo with anti-cancer therapeutics. Fluctuation spectroscopy of dynamic light scattering under conditions of holographic phase stability captures ultra-low Doppler frequency shifts down to 10 mHz caused by light scattering from intracellular motions. In the comparative preclinical/clinical trials presented here, a two-species (human and canine) and two-cancer (esophageal carcinoma and B-cell lymphoma) analysis of spectral phenotypes identifies a set of drug response characteristics that span species and cancer type. Spatial heterogeneity across a centimeter-scale patient biopsy sample is assessed by measuring multiple millimeter-scale sub-samples. Improved predictive performance is achieved for chemoresistance profiling by identifying red-shifted sub-samples that may indicate impaired metabolism and removing them from the prediction analysis. These results show potential for using biodynamic imaging for personalized selection of cancer therapy.

Dynamic light scattering and laser speckle contrast imaging of the brain: theory of the spatial and temporal statistics of speckle pattern evolution

Dynamic light scattering (DLS) and laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) are closely related techniques that exploit the statistics of speckle patterns, which can be utilized to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF). Conventionally, the temporal speckle intensity auto-correlation function g 2 t ( τ ) is calculated in DLS, while the spatial speckle contrast Ks is calculated in LSCI measurements. Due to the rapid development of CMOS detection technology with increased camera frame rates while still maintaining a large number of pixels, the ensemble or spatial average of g 2 s ( τ ) as well as the temporal contrast Kt can be easily calculated and utilized to quantify CBF. Although many models have been established, a proper summary is still lacking to fully characterize DLS and LSCI measurements for spatial and temporal statistics, laser coherence properties, various motion types, etc. As a result, there are many instances where theoretical models are misused. For instance, mathematical formulas derived in the diffusive regime or for ergodic systems are sometimes applied to small animal brain measurements, e.g., mice brains, where the assumptions are not valid. Therefore, we aim to provide a review of the speckle theory for both DLS and LSCI measurements with detailed derivations from first principles, taking into account non-ergodicity, spatial and temporal statistics of speckles, scatterer motion types, and laser coherence properties. From these calculations, we elaborate on the differences between spatial and temporal averaging for DLS and LSCI measurements that are typically ignored but can result in inaccurate measurements of blood flow, particularly the spatially varying nature of the static component in g 2 t ( τ ) and Kt. We also obtained g 2 s ( τ ) maps in in vivo mouse brain measurements using high frame rate CMOS cameras which have not been demonstrated before, and compared with g 2 t ( τ ) and Ks,t. This work provides a useful guide for choosing the correct model to analyze spatial and temporal speckle statistics in in-vivo DLS and LSCI measurements.

Measurements of slow tissue dynamics with short-separation speckle contrast optical spectroscopy

Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) measures 2D maps of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in small animal brains such as mice. The contrast measured in LSCI also includes the static and slow-varying components that contain information about brain tissue dynamics. But these components are less studied as compared to the fast dynamics of CBF. In traditional wide-field LSCI, the contrast measured in the tissue is largely contaminated by neighboring blood vessels, which reduces the sensitivity to these static and slow components. Our goal is to enhance the sensitivity of the contrast to static and slow tissue dynamics and test models to quantify the characteristics of these components. To achieve this, we have developed a short-separation speckle contrast optical spectroscopy (ss-SCOS) system by implementing point illumination and point detection using multi-mode fiber arrays to enhance the static and slow components in speckle contrast measurements as compared to traditional wide-field LSCI (WF-LSCI). We observed larger fractions of the static and slow components when measured in the tissue using ss-SCOS than in traditional LSCI for the same animal and region of interest. We have also established models to obtain the fractions of the static and slow components and quantify the decorrelation time constants of the intensity auto-correlation function for both fast blood flow and slower tissue dynamics. Using ss-SCOS, we demonstrate the variations of fast and slow brain dynamics in animals before and post-stroke, as well as within an hour post-euthanasia. This technique establishes the foundation to measure brain tissue dynamics other than CBF, such as intracellular motility.

Transverse Doppler effect due to Gaussian beams

We report on the observation of a transverse Doppler shift in the optical domain. It occurs when a receiving system travels perpendicularly to the propagation direction of a Gaussian beam. Shifts of a few tens of Hz have been evidence for a detector moving in the mm/s range. The shift increases as the detector is far from the beam axis. The observations fully agree with theoretical calculations on the propagation of Gaussian beams. It can be observed for any kind of waves, including radio and acoustic waves. Practical consequences are then discussed, especially for techniques using Doppler measurements in microsystems.

Imaging and characterization of transitions in biofilm morphology via anomalous diffusion following environmental perturbation

Microorganisms form macroscopic structures for the purpose of environmental adaptation. Sudden environmental perturbations induce dynamics that cause bacterial biofilm morphology to transit to another equilibrium state, thought to be related to anomalous diffusion processes. Here, detecting the super-diffusion characteristics would offer a long-sought goal for a rapid detection method of biofilm phenotypes based on their dynamics, such as growth or dispersal. In this paper, phase-sensitive Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) are combined to demonstrate wide field-of-view and label-free internal dynamic imaging of biofilms. The probability density functions (PDFs) of phase displacement of the backscattered light and the dynamic characteristics of the PDFs are estimated by a simplified mixed Cauchy and Gaussian model. This model can quantify the super-diffusion state and estimate the dynamic characteristics and macroscopic responses in biofilms that may further describe dispersion and growth in biofilm models.

Cancer Holography for Personalized Medicine

Digital holography can measure the 3D physiology and motion of cancer cells, allowing identification of effective chemotherapies for patients.

Common-path interferometer for digital holographic Doppler spectroscopy of living biological tissues

SIGNIFICANCE

Common-path interferometers have the advantage of producing ultrastable interferometric fringes compared with conventional interferometers, such as Michelson or Mach-Zehnder that are sensitive to environmental instabilities. Isolating interferometric measurements from mechanical disturbances is important in biodynamic imaging because Doppler spectroscopy of intracellular dynamics requires extreme stability for phase-sensitive interferometric detection to capture fluctuation frequencies down to 10 mHz.

AIM

The aim of this study was to demonstrate that Doppler spectra produced from a common-path interferometer using a grating and a spatial filter (SF) are comparable to, and more stable than, spectra from conventional biodynamic imaging.

APPROACH

A common-path interferometer using a holographic diffraction grating and an SF was employed with a low-coherence source. Simulations evaluated the spatial resolution. DLD-1 (human colon adenocarcinoma) spheroids were used as living target tissue samples. Power spectra under external vibrations and drug-response spectrograms were compared between common-path and Fourier-domain holographic systems.

RESULTS

The common-path holography configuration shows enhanced interferometric stability against mechanical vibrations through common-mode rejection while maintaining sensitivity to Doppler frequency fluctuations caused by intracellular motions.

CONCLUSIONS

A common-path interferometer using a grating and an SF can provide enhanced interferometric stability in tissue-dynamics spectroscopy for drug screening assays.

Doppler imaging detects bacterial infection of living tissue

Living 3D in vitro tissue cultures, grown from immortalized cell lines, act as living sentinels as pathogenic bacteria invade the tissue. The infection is reported through changes in the intracellular dynamics of the sentinel cells caused by the disruption of normal cellular function by the infecting bacteria. Here, the Doppler imaging of infected sentinels shows the dynamic characteristics of infections. Invasive Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis and Listeria monocytogenes penetrate through multicellular tumor spheroids, while non-invasive strains of Escherichia coli and Listeria innocua remain isolated outside the cells, generating different Doppler signatures. Phase distributions caused by intracellular transport display Lévy statistics, introducing a Lévy-alpha spectroscopy of bacterial invasion. Antibiotic treatment of infected spheroids, monitored through time-dependent Doppler shifts, can distinguish drug-resistant relative to non-resistant strains. This use of intracellular Doppler spectroscopy of living tissue sentinels opens a new class of microbial assay with potential importance for studying the emergence of antibiotic resistance.

Honggu Choi et al. use biodynamic Doppler imaging to monitor bacterial infection of 3D living tissue and describe changes in the intracellular motions of living host tissue induced by early-stage infection. This work demonstrates the potential for the clinical use of this method to test for antibiotic-resistant infections.

Biodynamic digital holographic speckle microscopy for oocyte and embryo metabolic evaluation

Assisted reproductive technologies seek to improve the success rate of pregnancies. Morphology scoring is a common approach to evaluate oocyte and embryo viability prior to embryo transfer in utero, but the efficacy of the method is low. We apply biodynamic imaging, based on dynamic light scattering and low-coherence digital holography, to assess the metabolic activity of oocytes and embryos. A biodynamic microscope, developed to image small and translucent biological specimens, is inserted into the bay of a commercial inverted microscope that can switch between conventional microscopy channels and biodynamic microscopy. We find intracellular Doppler spectral features that act as noninvasive proxies for embryo metabolic activity that may relate to embryo viability.

Biodynamic signatures from ex vivo bone marrow aspirates are associated with chemotherapy-induced neutropenia in cancer-bearing dogs

Background

Neutropenia is the most common dose‐limiting side effect of cytotoxic chemotherapy in cancer‐bearing dogs. Biodynamic imaging (BDI) is a functional imaging technology that measures dynamic light scattering from living, three‐dimensional tissues to characterize intracellular motion within those tissues. Previous studies have associated BDI biomarkers with tumour sensitivity to chemotherapy agents in dogs with naturally occurring cancer. We hypothesized that BDI, performed ex vivo on bone marrow aspirate samples, would identify dynamic biomarkers associated with the occurrence of specific degrees of neutropenia in tumour‐bearing dogs receiving doxorubicin chemotherapy.

Materials and Methods

Bone marrow aspirates were collected from 10 dogs with naturally occurring cancers prior to initiation of doxorubicin treatment. BDI was performed on bone marrow samples treated ex vivo with doxorubicin at 0.1, 1, 10 and 100 μM along with 0.1% DMSO as a control. Dogs then were treated with doxorubicin (30 mg/m², intravenously). Peripheral blood neutrophil counts were obtained on the day of treatment and again 7 days later. Receiver operating characteristic curves identified provisional breakpoints for BDI biomarkers that correlated with specific changes in neutrophil counts between the two time points.

Results

Provisional breakpoints for several BDI biomarkers were identified, specifying dogs with the largest proportionate change in neutrophils and with neutropenia that was grade 2 or higher following doxorubicin treatment.

Conclusions

Biodynamic imaging of bone marrow aspirates may identify those dogs at greater risk for neutropenia following doxorubicin chemotherapy. This approach may be useful for pre‐emptively modifying chemotherapy dosing in dogs to avoid unacceptable side effects.

Intracellular optical doppler phenotypes of chemosensitivity in human epithelial ovarian cancer

Development of an assay to predict response to chemotherapy has remained an elusive goal in cancer research. We report a phenotypic chemosensitivity assay for epithelial ovarian cancer based on Doppler spectroscopy of infrared light scattered from intracellular motions in living three-dimensional tumor biopsy tissue measured in vitro. The study analyzed biospecimens from 20 human patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. Matched primary and metastatic tumor tissues were collected for 3 patients, and an additional 3 patients provided only metastatic tissues. Doppler fluctuation spectra were obtained using full-field optical coherence tomography through off-axis digital holography. Frequencies in the range from 10 mHz to 10 Hz are sensitive to changes in intracellular dynamics caused by platinum-based chemotherapy. Metastatic tumor tissues were found to display a biodynamic phenotype that was similar to primary tissue from patients who had poor clinical outcomes. The biodynamic phenotypic profile correctly classified 90% [88–91% c.i.] of the patients when the metastatic samples were characterized as having a chemoresistant phenotype. This work suggests that Doppler profiling of tissue response to chemotherapy has the potential to predict patient clinical outcomes based on primary, but not metastatic, tumor tissue.

Tissue dynamics spectroscopic imaging: functional imaging of heterogeneous cancer tissue

SIGNIFICANCE

Tumor heterogeneity poses a challenge for the chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer. Tissue dynamics spectroscopy captures dynamic contrast and can capture the response of living tissue to applied therapeutics, but the current analysis averages over the complicated spatial response of living biopsy samples.

AIM

To develop tissue dynamics spectroscopic imaging (TDSI) to map the heterogeneous spatial response of tumor tissue to anticancer drugs.

APPROACH

TDSI is applied to tumor spheroids grown from cell lines and to ex vivo living esophageal biopsy samples. Doppler fluctuation spectroscopy is performed on a voxel basis to extract spatial maps of biodynamic biomarkers. Functional images and bivariate spatial maps are produced using a bivariate color merge to represent the spatial distribution of pairs of signed drug-response biodynamic biomarkers.

RESULTS

We have mapped the spatial variability of drug responses within biopsies and have tracked sample-to-sample variability. Sample heterogeneity observed in the biodynamic maps is associated with histological heterogeneity observed using inverted selective-plane illumination microscopy.

CONCLUSION

We have demonstrated the utility of TDSI as a functional imaging method to measure tumor heterogeneity and its potential for use in drug-response profiling.

Tracking the invasion of breast cancer cells in paper-based 3D cultures by OCT motility analysis

3D paper-based cultures (PBCs) are easy-to-use and provide a biologically representative microenvironment. By stacking a sheet of cell-laden paper below sheets containing cell-free hydrogel, we form an assay capable of segmenting cells by the distance they invaded from the original cell-seeded layer. These invasion assays are limited to end-point analyses with fluorescence-based readouts due to the highly scattering nature of the paper scaffolds. Here we demonstrate that optical coherence tomography (OCT) can distinguish living cells from the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM) or paper fibers based upon their intracellular motility amplitude (M). M is computed from fluctuation statistics of the sample, rejects shot noise, and is invariant to OCT signal attenuation. Using OCT motility analysis, we tracked the invasion of breast cancer cells over a 3-day period in 4-layer PBCs (160-300 µm thick) in situ. The cell population distributions determined with OCT are highly correlated with those obtained by fluorescence imaging, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.903. The ability of OCT motility analysis to visualize live cells and quantify cell distributions in PBC assays in situ and longitudinally provides a novel means for understanding how chemical gradients within the tumor microenvironment affect cellular invasion.

Biodynamic optical assay for embryo viability

Early stage porcine parthenogenetic embryos were evaluated for metabolic activity using a biodynamic microscope (BDM) that images dynamic light scattering using low-coherence digital holography. The microscope has a 45-deg illumination configuration that reduces specular background for the imaging of small translucent samples. The off-axis illumination is compatible with coherence-gated imaging because of volumetric light scattering in which the coherence plane is tilted at half the illumination angle in a three-dimensional tissue target. The BDM was used to profile the viability of porcine parthenotes with normal and with inhibited mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production using Doppler fluctuation spectroscopy. The ATP concentrations in the parthenotes, which are indicative of developmental potential, were validated by a conventional bioluminescence assay. Biodynamic classifications achieved ∼80  %   accuracy correlating sample ATP treatment, providing a quick, label-free surrogate measurement to replace invasive metabolic assays as a candidate for evaluating quality of early embryos in the assisted reproductive technology setting.

Intracellular Doppler Spectroscopy detects altered drug response in SKOV3 tumor spheroids with silenced or inhibited P-glycoprotein

Intracellular Doppler spectroscopy is a form of low-coherence digital holography based upon Doppler detection of scattered light that measures drug response/resistance in tumor spheroids, xenografts, and clinical biopsies. Multidrug resistance (MDR) is one of the main causes of ineffective cancer treatment. One MDR mechanism is mediated by the MDR1 gene that encodes the drug efflux pump P-glycoprotein (Pgp). Overexpression of Pgp in some cancers is associated with poor chemotherapeutic response. This paper uses intracellular Doppler spectroscopy to detect Pgp-mediated changes to drug response in 3D tissues grown from an ovarian cancer cell line (SKOV3). The SKOV3 cell line was incrementally exposed to cisplatin to create a cell line with increased Pgp expression (SKOV3cis). Subsequently, MDR1 in a subset of these cells was silenced in SKOV3cis using shRNA to create a doxycycline inducible, Pgp-silenced cell line (SKOV3cis-sh). A specific Pgp inhibitor, zosuquidar, was used to study the effects of Pgp inhibition on the Doppler spectra. Increased drug sensitivity was observed with Pgp silencing or inhibition as determined by drug IC50s of paclitaxel-response of silenced Pgp and doxorubicin-response of inhibited Pgp, respectively. These results indicate that intracellular Doppler spectroscopy can detect changes in drug response due to silencing or inhibition of a single protein associated with drug resistance with important consequences for personalized medicine.