Towards automated evaluation of mucus transport measured by microscopic OCT (mOCT) during hypertonic saline treatment of Cystic Fibrosis

Effective mucus transport in the airways is essential for infection defense. Malfunction caused by diseases like cystic fibrosis (CF) can result in severe and even life threatening complications. Time resolved imaging of mucus transport in vivo is essential to get mechanistic insight in factors influencing the transport and for developing and testing therapeutic interventions to increase mucus transport. Microscopic OCT (mOCT) was used successfully to image mucus transport in trachea of spontaneous breathing mice. Image series over more than 2 hours containing 35,000 frames were captured in wild type (WT) and βE…