In vivotime-lapse imaging of skin burn wound healing using second-harmonic generation microscopy

Abstract

Wound healing is a process to repair the damaged tissue caused by thermal burn, incised wound, or stab wound. Although the wound healing has many aspects, it is common for dynamics of collagen fiber, such as decomposition, production, or growth, to be closely related with wound healing. If such the healing process can be visualized as a timelapse image of the collagen fiber in the same subject, one may obtain new findings regarding biological repairing mechanisms in the healing process. In this article, to investigate the temporal modoification of dermal collagen fiber in the burn wound healing, we used second-harmonic-generation (SHG) microscopy, showing high selectivity and good image contrast to collagen molecules as well as high spatial resolution, optical three-dimensional sectioning, minimal invasiveness, deep penetration, the absence of interference from background light, and <i>in vivo</i> measurement without additional staining. Since SHG light arises from a non-centrosymmetric triple helix of three polypeptide chains in the collagen molecule, SHG intensity sensitively reflects the structure maturity of collagen molecule and its aggregates. A series of time-lapse SHG images during the wound healing process of 2 weeks clearly indicated that condensation and melting of dermal collagen fibers by the deep dermal burn, decomposition of the damaged collagen fibers in the inflammation phase, production of new collagen fibers in the proliferation phase, and the growth of the new collagen fibers in the remodeling phase. These results show a high potential of SHG microscopy for optical assessment of the wound healing process <i>in vivo</i>.