Abstract
We present the assessment of ex vivo mouse muscle tissue by quantitative parametric imaging of the near-infrared attenuation coefficient μt using optical coherence tomography. The resulting values of the local total attenuation coefficient μt (mean ± standard error) from necrotic lesions in the dystrophic skeletal muscle tissue of mdx mice are higher (9.6 ± 0.3 mm-1) than regions from the same tissue containing only necrotic myofibers (7.0 ± 0.6 mm-1), and significantly higher than values from intact myofibers, whether from an adjacent region of the same sample (4.8 ± 0.3 mm-1) or from healthy tissue of the wild-type C57 mouse (3.9 ± 0.2 mm-1) used as a control. Our results suggest that the attenuation coefficient could be used as a quantitative means to identify necrotic lesions and assess skeletal muscle tissue in mouse models of human Duchenne muscular dystrophy.