Anatomy of the murine and human cochlea visualized at the cellular level by synchrotron-radiation-based micro-computed tomography
2006
Diseases of the hearing organ and impairment affect a significant fraction of population. Therefore, the hearing organ
embedded as a helical structure in the cochlea within the hardest human osseous structure inside the petrous bone is
intensively investigated. Currently, studies of the cochlea with true micrometer resolution or better are destructive.
Membranes and three-dimensional vessel structures of post-mortem explanted human cochlea were only visualized with
limited spatial resolution or deformed anatomical features resulting from preparation artifacts. We have applied a
preparation and staining protocol developed for electron microscopy, which allows the visualization and quantification
of a great variety of soft-tissue structures including the Reissner's membrane, the tectorial membrane, basilar membrane,
modiolus, lamina radialis, and Nuel's space by the use of synchrotron-radiation-based micro computed tomography at
the beamline BW 2 (HASYLAB at DESY). The level of detail can be even improved by the application of sophisticated
computer vision tools, which enables the extraction of the vascular tree down to the capillaries and of the course of nerve
fibers as well as the topology of the osseous lamina radialis, which assembles the nerve fibers from the hair-cells to the
ganglia in the center of the cochlea, the modiolus. These non-destructively obtained three-dimensional data are principal
for the refined understanding of the hearing process by membranes morphologies and further anatomical features at the
cellular level and for teaching purposes in medical curricula.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
11
References
8
Citations
NaN
KQI