Retinal functional ultrasound imaging (rfUS) for assessing neurovascular alterations: a pilot study on a rat model of dementia

Fifty million people worldwide are affected by dementia, a heterogeneous neurodegenerative condition encompassing diseases such as Alzheimer’s, vascular dementia, and Parkinson’s. For them, cognitive decline is often the first marker of the pathology after irreversible brain damage has already occurred. Researchers now believe that structural and functional alterations of the brain vasculature could be early precursors of the diseases and are looking at how functional imaging could provide an early diagnosis years before irreversible clinical symptoms. In this preclinical pilot study, we proposed using functional ultrasound (fUS) on the retina to assess neurovascular alterations non-invasively, bypassing the skull limitation. We demonstrated for the first time the use of functional ultrasound in the retina and applied it to characterize the retinal hemodynamic response function in vivo in rats following a visual stimulus. We then demonstrated that retinal fUS could measure robust neurovascular coupling alterations between wild-type rats and TgF344-AD rat models of Alzheimer’s disease. We observed an average relative increase in blood volume of 21% in the WT versus 37% for the TG group (p = 0.019). As a portable, non-invasive and inexpensive technique, rfUS is a promising functional screening tool in clinics for dementia years before symptoms.