The Notre Dame Integrated Imaging Facility (NDIIF) announced that the Best Biological Imaging Publication 2017 is awarded to Dr. Jeremiah Zartman, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and affiliated member of the Center for Stem Cells and Regeneration. Zartman and coworkers, including Professor Alber and Professor Holly Goodson (also an affiliated member of the Center for Stem Cells and Regeneration) published a paper entitled “Whole blood clot optical clearing for nondestructive 3D imaging and quantitative analysis”.

The study addressed an optimized optical clearing method termed cCLOT that renders large whole blood clots transparent and allows confocal fluorescence microscopy close to one millimeter inside the clot. Zartman validated the utility of cCLOT by demonstrating a quantitative structural difference in the fibrin network appearance when clot contraction is impaired pharmacologically with blebbistatin.  The group also measured erythrocyte volumes at different depths inside clots and showed the volume remains the same during contraction, suggesting that contraction depends solely on reducing extracellular space. This finding indicates that clot contraction is not due to osmotic changes in erythrocytes but rather due to a higher compaction of the cells. The study was published in Biomedical Optics Express, 2017, 8 (8): 3671-3686 .

Adapted from an article originally published by Sarah Chapman at imaging.nd.edu on April 25, 2018.