Abstract
Novel diagnostic tools with the ability to monitor variations in biochemical composition and provide benchmark indicators of vascular tissue maturation are needed to create functional tissue replacements. We investigated the ability of fiber-based, label-free multispectral fluorescent lifetime imaging (FLIm) to quantify the anatomical variations in biochemical composition of native carotid arteries and validated these results against biochemical assays. FLIm-derived parameters in spectral band 415–455 nm correlated with tissue collagen content (R2 = 0.64) and cell number (R2 = 0.61) and in spectral band 465–553 nm strongly correlated with elastin content (R2 = 0.89). These results suggest that FLIm holds great potential for assessing vascular tissue maturation and functional properties based on tissue autofluorescence.
Highlights
New diagnostic tools for the quantitative analysis of biological variation within native and tissue-engineered vascular tissues are needed to create functional tissue replacements
We showed that label-free Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIm) can be used to determine the spatial changes in biochemical composition of carotid arteries over a range of matrix compositions and that these relationships are significantly altered with tissue processing
FLIm-derived parameters detect biochemical changes associated with anatomical locations Anatomical changes along the length of porcine carotid arteries give rise to distinct fluorescence properties that are captured by FLIm
Summary
New diagnostic tools for the quantitative analysis of biological variation within native and tissue-engineered vascular tissues are needed to create functional tissue replacements. An imaging system capable of evaluating the spatial and temporal changes in biochemical content in a number of research environments would greatly advance the development of vascular tissue-engineered constructs that mimic native tissue. In an effort to address this need, quantitative optical techniques based on endogenous tissue autofluorescence have been developed to image and nondestructively characterize tissue properties [3,4,5,6,7]. Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIm) is an imaging technique that uses differences in the exponential decay rate of tissue autofluorescence to generate images of tissue biochemical content [11, 12] that can be associated with tissue functional properties. FLIm is compatible with other imaging techniques that complement the biochemical information with a structural description of the sample, such as optical coherence tomography [7,10,16,17], intravascular ultrasound [15,17,18,19], and intravascular photoacoustics [20]
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