Animal Structure and Function

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ABSTRACT Animal Structure and Function Core The Animal Structure and Function Core provides centralized space for state-of-the-art structural and functional animal testing with a dedicated animal care technician to conduct the testing and to train investigators and their staff on the use of the new equipment. The number of faculty in the Department of Ophthalmology conducting animal structure and functional testing has grown rapidly in recent years. With this critical mass of investigators, there are compelling financial and logistical reasons to minimize the number of animals in scientific studies. The use of ocular imaging methods that enable longitudinal observations in a living animal can greatly reduce the need to sacrifice animals at different time points in an experiment. It also provides invaluable information that is used to evaluate the accuracy of mouse models of human eye diseases. In addition, the high cost of retinal imaging devices has made it prohibitively expensive for individual scientist to purchase, therefore limiting the scope of their scientific investigations. This core will provide a range of imaging and functioning testing services including the Micron IV Animal Imaging System with multifocal ERG and ERG setup, Spectralis SDOCT system for spectral domain optical coherence tomography studies and PacScan 300 A-scanner for measuring axial length, anterior chamber depth and lens thickness, ultra sound imaging allowing our researchers to make most efficient use of their time and resources.