Abstract
Current musculoskeletal imaging techniques usually target the macro-morphology of articular cartilage or use histological analysis. These techniques are able to reveal advanced osteoarthritic changes in articular cartilage but fail to give detailed information to distinguish early osteoarthritis from healthy cartilage, and this necessitates high-resolution imaging techniques measuring cells and the extracellular matrix within the multilayer structure of articular cartilage. This review provides a comprehensive exploration of the cellular components and extracellular matrix of articular cartilage as well as high-resolution imaging techniques, including magnetic resonance image, electron microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, second harmonic generation microscopy, and laser scanning confocal arthroscopy, in the measurement of multilayer ultra-structures of articular cartilage. This review also provides an overview for micro-structural analysis of the main components of normal or osteoarthritic cartilage and discusses the potential and challenges associated with developing non-invasive high-resolution imaging techniques for both research and clinical diagnosis of early to late osteoarthritis.
Highlights
The progression of osteoarthritis (OA) has been associated with changes in the morphology and organization of cartilage components [1,2,3]
We argue that the orientation of the elastin fibers is in general parallel to that of collagen in the superficial zone of articular cartilage
Articular cartilage is a tissue with heterogeneous chondrocyte and extracellular matrix (ECM) organization
Summary
The progression of osteoarthritis (OA) has been associated with changes in the morphology and organization of cartilage components [1,2,3]. This makes it possible for researchers to assess diseased or engineered cartilage and appraise its compressive property by investigating the morphology of PG, such as density, length, and the magnitude of aggregation It is the high magnification and superior imaging resolution capability that makes electron microscopes surpass any available light microscopes in providing detailed structural information of articular cartilage (Table 1). SHG arthroscopy would surpass other imaging techniques, such as electron microscopy, CLSM, and LSCA, for collagen studies as it would involve no destructive tissue biopsy and less phototoxicity to articular cartilage and allow imaging of the tissue with greater depth (Table 1). It is worth introducing several magnification choices for researchers and clinicians to obtain several levels of cellular or subcellular information [65,66,67]
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