Current approaches to in vivo imaging of the mouse central nervous system (CNS) do not offer a combination of micrometer resolution and a whole-brain field of view. To address this limitation, we introduce an approach based on synchrotron radiation-based hard X-ray micro computed tomography (SRμCT). We performed intravital SRμCT acquisitions of mouse CNS fluid spaces at three synchrotron radiation facilities. Imaging was conducted on both anesthetized free-breathing and ventilated animals, with and without retrospective cardiac gating. We achieved whole-brain imaging at 6.3 μm uniform voxel size, observed the distribution of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) contrast agent over time and quantified choroid plexus movement. SRμCT bridges the gap between multiphoton microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging, offering dynamic imaging with micrometer-scale resolution and whole-organ field of view. Intravital SRμCT will play a crucial role in validating and integrating hypotheses on CSF dynamics and solute transport by providing unique data that cannot be acquired otherwise.
@article{arxiv.2507.03186,
title = {In vivo imaging of central nervous system fluid spaces using synchrotron radiation-based micro computed tomography},
author = {Marta Girona Alarcón and Willy Kuo and Mattia Humbel and Christine Tanner and Luca Fardin and Britta Bausch and Yann Decker and Irene Spera and Griffin Rodgers and Hans Deyhle and Alberto Bravin and Masato Hoshino and Arash Panahifar and Kentaro Uesugi and Sergei Gasilov and Petr Pleskač and Yuansheng Zhang and Diane de Zélicourt and Amandine Brenna and Ahmad Kamal Hamid and Pooya Razzaghi Khamesi and Britta Engelhardt and Steven T. Proulx and Bert Müller and Vartan Kurtcuoglu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.03186},
year = {2025}
}