Cartilage tissue engineering and multimodality in two-photon microscopy

As a comparatively non-destructive imaging technique into living specimens, fluorescence microscopy has a number of strong advantages over alternative imaging modalities (X-ray, MRI, CT-scan, arthro-scan, etc..). The limited analysis in thick tissue has given rise to the development of other techniques, multiphoton excitation microscopy in particular. A need for increased sensitivity and resolution has been driving the development of new sophisticated fluorescence techniques based on microscopies to study: the tissue microstructure in situ (CLSM, SHG) on deeper thick sections of tissue (multiphoton), molecular diffusion (FRAP, FCS) with fluorescent protein variants and molecular interaction (spectral, FRET, FLIM). In this paper, we have considered developments based on near infrared (NIR) femtosecond excitation in the imaging of articular tissue and discussed the technical limitations and perspectives.