Mouse fundus photography and angiography: A catalogue of normal and mutantphenotypes

PURPOSE: Mice are an increasingly important tool in ophthalmic research. As a result of studying spontaneous and induced mutations, many new ocular di seases have been described in mice in recent years, including several degen erative retinal diseases that demonstrate progression with age. Clearly, do cumentation of progressive changes in clinical phenotype is an important fa cet of characterizing new mutations and for comparing them with human disea ses. Despite these facts, there are few published photographs of mouse fund i. The small size of the mouse eye and the steep curvature of its structure s have made it difficult to obtain high quality fundus photographs. The pur pose of this work was to develop procedures for mouse fundus photography an d angiography and to use these techniques to examine several new mouse stra ins with ocular abnormalities. METHODS: We have used a small animal fundus camera and condensing lens to d evelop a reliable technique for producing high quality fundus images of con scious albino and pigmented mice. The fundus camera also was utilized to de velop a method for fluorescein angiography, which demonstrated the normal r etinal vascular bed as well as abnormal vascular leakage. In addition, seve ral mouse strains with previously unreported ocular abnormalities (includin g two with inherited optic nerve colobomas) and a catalogue of previously u npublished clinical images for various mutant mice are presented. RESULTS: Altogether, we provide clinical images for C57BL/6J, BALB/cByJ, re tinal degeneration 1 (rd1), Rd2, rd3, rd7, achondroplasia, nervous, motor n euron degeneration, Purkinje cell degeneration, kidney and retinal defects, optic nerve coloboma 1, and two apparently multigenic optic nerve coloboma s in a strain of mixed derivation (ONC) and the inbred CALB/Rk strain. CONCLUSIONS: Our photography procedure reliably produces high quality image s of the mouse fundus. This permitted us to record progressive retinal chan ges over time in the same animal, allowed us to compare the phenotypes of n ewly discovered retinal mutants to existing mutants at other institutions a nd to potentially similar human conditions, and finally, permitted us to pr oduce a catalogue of previously unpublished clinical phenotypes for various mutant mice.