Purpose  Although corneal nerves have been studied in adults and there are some reports that are corneal innervation during development, little is known about the quantitative analysis of the corneal nerves during development.
Methods  Mouse corneas were collected at various stages of development from embryonic 20 days to 15 months. Tubulin-3α labeled nerves in whole-mount tissues were imaged and analyzed quantitatively with reference to location, morphologic appearance, directionality, and nerve densities by computer-assistant software.
Results  Corneal nerve gets into corneal epithelium and stroma from limbus. Corneal nerve density gradually increases from birth. About one month, the density reaches to the peak. The high density status remains to 3 month age. And then the density has an obvious ascend trend. Besides, the subbasal nerve vortex is formed at 24 day after birth and its morphologic appearance and directionality did not correlate with age.
Conclusion  Corneal nerve innervation matures from 1 month to 3 month after birth and then starts to aged stage.