Characterization of cerebrovascular changes in Alzheimer’s disease mice by photoacoustic imaging

The cerebral vasculature plays a significant role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), however, the specific association between them remains unclear. In this paper, based on the benefits of photoacoustic imaging (PAI), including label-free, high-resolution, in vivo imaging of vessels, we investigated the structural changes of cerebral vascular in wild-type (WT) mice and AD mice at different ages, analyzed the characteristics of the vascular in different brain regions, and correlated vascular characteristics with cognitive behaviors. The results showed that vascular density and vascular branching index in the cortical and frontal regions of both WT and AD mice decreased with age. Meanwhile, vascular lacunarity increased with age, and the changes in vascular structure were more pronounced in AD mice. The trend of vascular dysfunction aligns with the worsening cognitive dysfunction as the disease progresses. Here, we utilized in vivo PAI to analyze the changes in vascular structure during the progression of AD, elucidating the spatial and temporal correlation with cognitive impairment, which will provide more intuitive data for the study of the correlation between cerebrovascular and the development of AD.