Live Imaging and Functional Evaluation Core

PROJECT SUMMARY – LIVE IMAGING AND FUNCTIONAL EVALUATION (LIFE) CORE Central to understanding and treating vision loss, a major goal of the National Eye Institute (NEI), is imaging changes in the structure of the eye and retina as well as functionally evaluating vision in animal models of eye diseases. The LIFE Core provides these critical services to the NEI funded investigators at the Jules Stein Eye Institute and the broader UCLA community. The Core allows imaging the eyes and retinas of small animals using optical coherence tomography (OCT) techniques and fundoscopy. These approaches allow for imaging the cornea, anterior segment, and retina. The Core also provides services to perform in vivo electroretinography (ERGs) and visually evoked potentials (VEPs), two non-invasive approaches for measuring the function of the retina and visual system. Finally, the Core provides services for running animal behaviors, such as measuring the optokinetic reflex and cricket hunting. All of these services can be run by a staff technician, or the staff technician can train members of NEI-funded laboratories at UCLA to perform the above measurements. These approaches allow the structure and function of the visual system to be measured in living animals, which allows tracking deterioration of the visual system in disease models and determining the therapeutic potential of diverse treatments for vision-related diseases. These capabilities expand and amplify the research of NEI-funded investigators accelerating research to prevent and treat vision loss.