Imaging the bone marrow stem cells morphogenesis in PGA scaffold by multiphoton autofluorescence and second harmonic (SHG) imaging

The ability to image tissue engineering products without damaging histological procedures is important for the understanding of the dynamics of tissue reorganization and formation. In this work, we test the ability of multiphoton autofluorescence and second harmonic generation microscopy to image engineered tissues following chrondrogenic induction. The system we used is human bone marrow stem cells seeded in the scaffold polyglycolic acid (PGA). Our results show that autofluorescence can be used to image cells while second harmonic generation signal can be used to visualize the synthesis of extracellular matrix. This approach demonstrates the ability of multiphoton imaging in the study of tissue engineering products.