Visualization of aligned collagen fibrils in cartilage by second harmonic generation microscopy

Abstract

Articular cartilage is located at the bone ends in synovial joints and enables smooth and pain‐free joint motion. Its function is in large part determined by a network of collagen fibrils organized into zones and compartments, but little is known about how this organization is achieved in growing animals [1]. The articular cartilage develops superficially to a layer of temporary growth cartilage. The growth cartilage is responsible for the expansion of the bone ends and is replaced by bone during growth. The interface between the immature articular cartilage and the growth cartilage is histologically indistinguishable [2]. On the other hand, aligned collagen fibrils encapsulate cells in the articular cartilage but not in the growth cartilage, so the immature articular cartilage and the growth cartilage can be distinguished by locating these fibrils with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in growing animals [1]. However, TEM requires extensive sample preparation and has limited field of view. Second harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy is a promising image modality that is highly specific to collagen fibrils without any staining [3]. SHG is a coherent nonlinear optical process that is specific for non‐centrosymmetric structures such as collagen fibrils and is characterized by frequency‐doubling of light. In contrast to fluorescence, the SHG intensity and radiation direction is highly sensitive to the arrangement of collagen fibrils. In addition, as the arrangement of fibrils can vary at different length scales, this sensitiveness can depend on the size of the focal volume. The aim of this study was to examine if the aligned fibrils encapsulating cells could be visualized by SHG microscopy without any staining in order to locate the immature articular cartilage of a growing animal. The cartilage located at the distal femur of growing piglets was imaged by detecting the forward and backward directed SHG. Focusing objectives with different numerical aperture (NA), i.e. focal volume, were used to examine the collagen fibrils at different length scales. The results demonstrated that the ratio of forward to backward SHG was dependent on the NA and that the dependence on the NA varied with distance from the articular surface (Figure 1). The high forward to backward ratio at low NA near the articular surface (Figure 2) was interpreted to represent the aligned fibrils characterizing the articular cartilage. The gradual transition between the immature articular cartilage and the growth cartilage was therefore clearly visualized by SHG, and SHG microscopy is therefore a promising technique to study the development of the collagen matrix in articular cartilage.