A molecular hyperspectral imaging system based on acousto-optic tunable filter for quantitative observation of nerve fiber

A molecular hyperspectral imaging system is developed and used to observe the spinal nerve sections. The molecular hyperspectral images contain both the structural and biochemical information of spinal nerve sections which is very useful for automatic identification and quantitative morphological analysis of nerve fibers. This characteristic makes it possible for researchers to observe the unstained spinal nerve and live cells in their native environment. The improved spectral angle mapper algorithm was proposed and used to segment the myelin contours. Then the morphological parameters such as myelin thickness and myelin area were calculated and evaluated. The three dimension surface view images were drawn to help the investigators observe spinal nerve at different angles. The experiment results show that the hyperspectral based method has the potential to identify the spinal nerve more accurate than the traditional method as the new method contains both the spectral and spatial information of nerve sections.