Correlation of changes in the mandible and retina/choroid vasculature of a rat model of BRONJ.

Bisphosphonate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw (BRONJ) causes bones of the mandible and maxilla to become necrotic and protrude into the oral cavity. Compromised blood supply to bone is also a feature of BRONJ. The design of this study was first to use our established technique of molar extraction and IV bisphosphonate injection to produce features of BRONJ in rats that mimic the human disease; second to confirm vascular changes in the mandible and eye using micro-CT of vascular casts, and image analysis of retina/choroid images; and third to show parallel bisphosphonate-induced changes in the structure and markers of the vasculature of the bone and eye.

Assessment of pulpal vitality using laser speckle imaging.

Background And Objective: The pulpal chamber of each tooth contains the vasculature necessary to maintain a viable tooth. A critical need exists to develop an objective, repeatable method to assess pulpal viability. We hypothesized that the existence of blood perfusion within the pulp can be determined with analysis of laser speckle imaging (LSI) patterns generated by transillumination of the tooth.

Revisiting optical clearing with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO).

Functional optical characterization of disease progression and response to therapy suffers from loss of spatial resolution and imaging depth due to scattering. Here we report on the ability of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) alone to reduce the optical scattering of skin. We observed a threefold reduction in the scattering of skin with topical DMSO application.