Statistical parametric mapping of stimuli evoked changes in total blood flow velocity in the mouse cortex obtained with extended-focus optical coherence microscopy

Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging is the current gold-standard in neuroimaging. fMRI exploits local changes in blood oxygenation to map neuronal activity over the entire brain. However, its spatial resolution is currently limited to a few hundreds of microns. Here we use extended-focus optical coherence microscopy (xfOCM) to quantitatively measure changes in blood flow velocity during functional hyperaemia at high spatio-temporal resolution in the somatosensory cortex of mice. As optical coherence microscopy acquires hundreds of depth slices simultaneously, blood flow velocity measurements can be performed over several vessels in parallel. We present the proof-of-principle of an optimised statistical parametric mapping framework to analyse quantitative blood flow timetraces acquired with xfOCM using the general linear model. We demonstrate the feasibility of generating maps of cortical hemodynamic reactivity at the capillary level with optical coherence microscopy. To validate our method, we exploited 3 stimulation paradigms, covering different temporal dynamics and stimulated limbs, and demonstrated its repeatability over 2 trials, separated by a week.