Abstract
The rapid evolution of regenerative medicine and its associated scientific fields, such as tissue engineering, has provided great promise for multiple applications where replacement and regeneration of damaged or lost tissue is required. In order to evaluate and optimise the tissue engineering techniques, visualisation of the material of interest is crucial. This includes monitoring of the cellular behaviour, extracellular matrix composition, scaffold structure, and other crucial elements of biomaterials. Non-invasive visualisation of artificial tissues is important at all stages of development and clinical translation. A variety of preclinical and clinical imaging methods—including confocal multiphoton microscopy, optical coherence tomography, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computed tomography (CT)—have been used for the evaluation of artificial tissues. This review attempts to present the imaging methods available to assess the composition and quality of 3D microenvironments, as well as their integration with human tissues once implanted in the human body. The review provides tissue-specific application examples to demonstrate the applicability of such methods on cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neural tissue engineering.
Highlights
The rapid evolution of regenerative medicine and its associated scientific fields, such as tissue engineering, has provided great promise for multiple applications where replacement and regeneration of damaged or lost tissue is needed [1,2,3]
The phase difference of light is transformed into an amplitude difference detectable by the human eye, which proves to be a great improvement in contrast compared to regular bright-field microscopy
Confocal microscopy (CM) can be utilised without any labelling, which is very useful for living cells and tissues
Summary
The rapid evolution of regenerative medicine and its associated scientific fields, such as tissue engineering, has provided great promise for multiple applications where replacement and regeneration of damaged or lost tissue is needed [1,2,3]. In order to evaluate and optimise the tissue engineering techniques, visualisation of the material of interest is crucial. This includes monitoring of the cellular behaviour, extracellular matrix composition, scaffold structure, and other crucial elements of biomaterials [4]. Imaging techniques are the way forward for the evaluation of biomaterials in patients as part of a regenerative medicine treatment [6]. In this manuscript, we review both laboratory- and clinical-grade high-resolution imaging techniques and their applications, for the analysis and reconstruction of 3D microenvironments in regenerative medicine
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