Morphological Analysis Of Placental Villi Via High-resolution Optical Coherence Tomography

Oxygen and nutrient exchange between maternal and fetus mainly take place in placental villi.However,in-depth analysis of placental villus morphology is limited by tissue processing and imaging technique.Therefore,this paper builds a non-invasive,high-resolution optical coherence tomography three-dimensional imaging platform.Three-dimensional imaging and quantitative analysis of placental villi in healthy,gestational diabetes,preeclampsia,and fetal growth restriction were performed via OCT.Objective: To demonstrate the three-dimensional morphology of placental villi via optical coherence chromatography in healthy,gestational diabetic mellitus,preeclampsia,and fetal growth restricted placentae,as well as to quantitatively measure the placental intermediate villi diameter,terminal villi diameter,terminal villi length,and terminal villi branch number.Three-dimensional imaging via OCT provides more information for studying the structural characteristics and villus morphology of placental affecting fetal maternal material exchange.Methods: Build an optical coherence tomography imaging platform.After optical coherence tomography of the villi of a healthy placenta,frozen sections were quickly stained with hematoxylin eosin.Three-dimensional imaging of placental villi in healthy,gestational diabetes mellitus,preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction was performed using optical coherence tomography platform.Quantitative measurement of intermediate villus diameter,terminal villi diameter,terminal villus length,and terminal villus branching number.Result: Optical coherence tomography revealed the morphological structure of placental villi from a three-dimensional perspective.Based on the three-dimensional imaging of optical coherence tomography,the terminal villi of the gestational diabetic mellitus placenta were larger in diameter,abundant terminal villi branched from the intermediate villi,and the terminal villi branches was significantly better than that of the healthy placenta.The placenta with preeclampsia had a small diameter of the intermediate villi and a small number of terminal villi branches.The terminal villi of the placenta with fetal growth restriction are sparse and have a small diameter,and there are even no terminal villi branch on some intermediate villi.Conclusion: The imaging performance of optical coherence tomography is significantly better than that of frozen sections stained with hematoxylin eosin.For the first time,the three-dimensional morphology of placental villi structure in healthy,gestational diabetes mellitus,preeclampsia and fetal growth restriction was demonstrated via the optical coherence tomography imaging platform.The three-dimensional image of optical coherence tomography can visualize the morphological characteristics of placental villi from a more intuitive perspective,and providing a new idea for studying the pathological mechanism of pregnancy complications and how placental villi morphology affects maternal-fetal material exchange.