Abstract
Multiphoton microscopy (MPM) is currently acknowledged as a very powerful method for the visualization and analysis of tissues in biomedicine. It allows high resolution, deep optical sectioning and reduced photodamage. MPM does not require labeling and is deployable both in-vivo and ex-vivo, which simplifies the diagnostic procedure compared to traditional histology approaches based on tissue fixation and staining. Among the important applications of MPM in medicine, differentiation of healthy from pathological samples has gained massive interest over the past years, but MPM is also very useful for acquiring new insights on how various pathologies originate and progress. In this work we review the use of MPM in imaging assays focused on investigating unlabeled oral tissues (teeth and oral mucosa) and discuss a series of important results which hold potential for enabling a next generation of oral tissue characterization/diagnostic frameworks. The surveyed literature shows that nonlinear optical imaging tools can significantly contribute to achieve a better understanding of oral cavity tissues, by allowing the accurate analysis of morphological structures and relevant biochemical processes.
Highlights
The oral cavity represents the first part of the digestive tract, and the main entry for nutrients and different environmental components in the human body
We review Multiphoton microscopy (MPM) applications focused on the study of oral tissues, addressing previous efforts dealing with visualization and analysis of different structures in the oral cavity, and objective diagnostic methods that were reported to detect and discriminate various oral diseases
Teeth are made of different types of tissues, the complementarity of available MPM techniques allows observing in detail these distinct structural regions. 2PEF signals originating from cellular constituents provide morphological and functional information
Summary
The oral cavity represents the first part of the digestive tract, and the main entry for nutrients and different environmental components in the human body. The resolution achievable with OCT is positioned between the resolution available with ultrasoundbased techniques, and with point-scanning optical techniques, e.g., Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) This latter technique, CLSM, is well-suitable for in vivo clinical studies (in implementations for endomicroscopy), being able to non-invasively provide optical sections of both hard and soft tissues in the oral cavity [21,22,23]. During the past couple of decades, Multiphoton Microscopy (MPM) has emerged as a powerful tool to explore the structure and function of biological samples, and especially of tissues This is mainly because MPM techniques can non-invasively acquire optical sections (virtual biopsies) in unlabeled tissues, containing information that is very relevant for diagnostic purposes. We review MPM applications focused on the study of oral tissues, addressing previous efforts dealing with visualization and analysis of different structures in the oral cavity, and objective diagnostic methods that were reported to detect and discriminate various oral diseases
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