Toolbox for In Vivo imaging of host–parasite interactions at multiple scales

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Animal models have for long been pivotal for parasitology research. Over the last few years, techniques such as intravital, optoacoustic and magnetic resonance imaging, optical projection tomography, and selective plane illumination microscopy developed promising potential for gaining insights into host-pathogen interactions by allowing different visualization forms in vivo and ex vivo. Advances including increased resolution, penetration depth, and acquisition speed, together with more complex image analysis methods, facilitate tackling biological problems previously impossible to study and/or quantify. Here we discuss advances and challenges in the in vivo imaging toolbox, which hold promising potential for the field of parasitology.MDN is funded by EMBO fellowship ALTF 1048-2016, and by EVIMalaR (242095 FP7) and RSHTM (000529) fellowships with Volker Heussler (IZB, Bern) related to OPT and OAI studies, as well as Swiss National Science Foundation fellowships 310030_159519 and 316030_145013 funding work carried out in his laboratory. FS and MF acknowledge the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (No: 205320_179038/1). Work in the laboratory of FF is funded by a Human Frontier Science Program grant (RGY 0066) and the German Science Foundation (SFB 1129). We apologize to the many colleagues for not citing their work due to restrictions by the journal and the broad scope of the review.