Researchers have developed a laser-based imaging tool to map the disruption of blood flow to the brain after drug abuse.
The new technology will help in brain-cancer surgery and tissue engineering, and might aso lead to better treatment options for recovering drug addicts.
The laser-based method was jointly developed by researchers from Stony Brook University in New York and the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Researchers demonstrated their technique by measuring how cocaine disrupts blood flow in the brains of mice.
"The resulting images are the first of their kind that directly and clearly document such effects," study co-author Yingtian Pan, an associate professor at the Stony Brook University in the U.S., said in a press release.
Upon analysis of the images, researchers found that after 30 days of chronic cocaine injection there was a drastic drop in blood flow speed.
For the first time, the researchers were able to determine cocaine-induced microischemia, when blood flow is shut down - a precursor to stroke.
Drugs such as cocaine can lead to aneurysm-like bleeding and strokes. However, what exactly happens to the brains' blood vessels is hard to pin down; somewhat because the current imaging tools are limited in what they can see.
The latest technological advance will help the researchers observe exactly how cocaine affects the tiny blood vessels in a mouse's brain. The new technique is an advanced version of a method called Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT) where laser light hits the moving blood cells and bounces back.
The findings of the study were published in the journal Biomedical Optics Express.