The growth of the mouse eye and retina after birth is a dynamic, highly regulated process. In this study, we applied visible-light optical coherence tomography (vis-OCT), a non-invasive imaging technique, to examine developing retinal layer structures after eye-opening. We introduced a resampled circumpapillary B-scan averaging technique to improve the inter-layer contrast, enabling retinal layer thickness measurements as early as postnatal day 13 (P13) – right after eye-opening. We confirmed vis-OCT measurements using ex vivo confocal microscopy of retinal sections at different ages. Our results demonstrate that vis-OCT can visualize the developmental murine retinal layer structure in vivo, which offers us new opportunities to better characterize the pathological alterations in mouse models of developmental eye diseases.

出生后小鼠眼睛和视网膜的生长是一个动态的、高度调控的过程。在这项研究中，我们应用可见光光学相干断层扫描 (vis-OCT)（一种非侵入性成像技术）来检查睁眼后发育中的视网膜层结构。我们引入了一种重新采样的环视乳头 B 扫描平均技术，以提高层间对比度，使视网膜层厚度测量早在出生后第 13 天 (P13)——就在睁眼之后。我们使用不同年龄的视网膜切片的离体共聚焦显微镜确认了 vis-OCT 测量。我们的结果表明，vis-OCT 可以可视化体内发育的小鼠视网膜层结构, 这为我们提供了新的机会来更好地描述发育性眼病小鼠模型的病理改变。