Advanced 3D imaging reveals hidden nerve networks inside joints
· News-MedicalA joint effort
TMJs on both sides of the face connect the jawbone to the skull and act like a sliding hinge, allowing us to talk, chew and yawn. The relationship between nerve density and pain in joints like the TMJ is relatively unknown, and the traditional method for studying these joint nerves involves slicing tissue into thin slivers and staining them with dyes to make nerve cells visible under a microscope.
"Tissue clearing makes an entire piece of tissue transparent for 3D imaging so you can visualize the nerves inside, and the microscope we used works like a wall of light sweeping through the volume of tissue all at once, making it faster than a traditional microscope while still achieving near-confocal resolution with minimal tissue damage," Almarza said. "Some of the best of these systems in the world are custom-built here at Pitt by Simon Watkins, and the clearing methods have been developed by Alan Watson."
Watkins, distinguished professor of cell biology and immunology, founded the CBI in 1991. Unlike a typical fee-based core facility, CBI faculty collaborate directly with researchers to design specialized microscopes and imaging techniques from the ground up. While Watkins is the expert in building the scopes themselves, his colleague Alan Watson, associate professor of cell biology, provides the other half of the equation: the computing infrastructure, tissue clearing protocols, and programming expertise to store and analyze the enormous volumes of data these systems produce. Because no current commercial solution exists for imaging nerves inside of large, dense tissue, the team built one.
Clearing the way for understanding pain
"The c-Clear method takes about six to eight weeks to obtain an image, making it far more labor and time-intensive than normal histological methods, but the result is an extremely powerful and clear representation of how these nerves branch," Almarza said.
"I believe we're the first to publish this new type of imaging dataset on the portal," Almarza said. "The photos and videos are amazing, and our next challenge is quantification and figuring out the computational pipelines to really analyze what we're seeing."
"There are a lot of people whose radiographs look like they should have pain in their TMJ, but they're actually talking just fine," Almarza said. "Is it because of the type of nerves in there? And why is it different from people with pain? That's the type of question this research is hoping to answer."
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