Quantifying light scattering with single-mode fiber -optic confocal microscopy.

Background: Confocal microscopy has become an important option for examining tissues in vivo as a diagnostic tool and a quality control tool for tissue-engineered constructs. Collagen is one of the primary determinants of biomechanical stability. Since collagen is also the primary scattering element in skin and other soft tissues, we hypothesized that laser-optical imaging methods, particularly confocal scattered-light scanning, would allow us to quantify scattering intensity and determine collagen content in biological layers.

A fully automated approach to quantitatively determine thickness of tissue-engineered cell sheets.

Sheet-based tissue engineering is an innovative field that has provided the scientific community with new tissue-engineered products such as skin, cornea, heart valves, and vascular grafts. As this area of tissue engineering progresses toward clinical implementation, quality control becomes more and more important. Imaging methods advertise themselves because of their high resolution and good tissue-fluid contrast.