Optical detection of structural abnormalities in chronic alcoholic mice brain tissues using Partial Wave Spectroscopy

Light is a good probe to study the nanoscale structural alteration in brain cells/tissues. The individuals who consumed alcohol with no specific neurological or histopathological disorders have shown signs of regional brain damage and cognitive dysfunction. However, the nano to submicron scale structural alterations in chronic alcoholic’s brain cells/tissues are hardly explored. Here, the recently developed finer focusing mesoscopic physic-based imaging technique, partial wave spectroscopy (PWS), is used to probe the nanoscale structural alteration in alcoholic mice brain tissues. This highly sensitive and versatile PWS technique can quantify the nanoscale mass density/refractive index fluctuations due to alcohol as the degree of structural disorder strength (L_d) parameter. The results show that the average and std of L_d is significantly higher in the brain tissues of chronic alcoholic mice relative to control. This increase in the disorder strength of alcoholic mice brains may be due to the increase in the mass density fluctuations or the rearrangements of the different macromolecular spatial structures. The potential application of the PWS technique to reveal the underlying correlation of nanoscale alterations in brain tissues and chronic alcoholism will be discussed.