Makkithaya Kausalya Neelavara, Mazumder Nirmal, Wang Wei-Hsun, Chen Wei-Liang, Chen Ming-Chi, Lee Ming-Xin, Lin Chin-Yu, Yeh Yung-Ju, Tsay Gregory J, Chopperla Sitaram, Mahato Krishna Kishore, Kao Fu-Jen, Zhuo Guan-Yu
Department of Biophysics, Manipal School of Life Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka 576104, India.
Institute of Translational Medicine and New Drug Development, China Medical University, Taichung 404328, Taiwan.
APL Bioeng. 2024 Apr 30;8(2):026107. doi: 10.1063/5.0196676. eCollection 2024 Jun.
Establishing quantitative parameters for differentiating between healthy and diseased cartilage tissues by examining collagen fibril degradation patterns facilitates the understanding of tissue characteristics during disease progression. These findings could also complement existing clinical methods used to diagnose cartilage-related diseases. In this study, cartilage samples from normal, osteoarthritis (OA), and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) tissues were prepared and analyzed using polarization-resolved second harmonic generation (P-SHG) imaging and quantitative image texture analysis. The enhanced molecular contrast obtained from this approach is expected to aid in distinguishing between healthy and diseased cartilage tissues. P-SHG image analysis revealed distinct parameters in the cartilage samples, reflecting variations in collagen fibril arrangement and organization across different pathological states. Normal tissues exhibited distinct / values compared with those of OA and RA, indicating collagen type transition and cartilage erosion with chondrocyte swelling, respectively. Compared with those of normal tissues, OA samples demonstrated a higher degree of linear polarization, suggesting increased tissue birefringence due to the deposition of type-I collagen in the extracellular matrix. The distribution of the planar orientation of collagen fibrils revealed a more directional orientation in the OA samples, associated with increased type-I collagen, while the RA samples exhibited a heterogeneous molecular orientation. This study revealed that the imaging technique, the quantitative analysis of the images, and the derived parameters presented in this study could be used as a reference for disease diagnostics, providing a clear understanding of collagen fibril degradation in cartilage.
通过检查胶原纤维降解模式来建立区分健康和患病软骨组织的定量参数，有助于理解疾病进展过程中的组织特征。这些发现还可以补充现有的用于诊断软骨相关疾病的临床方法。在本研究中，制备了来自正常、骨关节炎（OA）和类风湿关节炎（RA）组织的软骨样本，并使用偏振分辨二次谐波产生（P-SHG）成像和定量图像纹理分析进行了分析。预计从这种方法获得的增强分子对比度将有助于区分健康和患病的软骨组织。P-SHG图像分析揭示了软骨样本中的不同参数，反映了不同病理状态下胶原纤维排列和组织的变化。与OA和RA的样本相比，正常组织表现出不同的/值，分别表明胶原类型转变和软骨侵蚀伴软骨细胞肿胀。与正常组织相比，OA样本表现出更高程度的线性偏振，表明由于I型胶原在细胞外基质中的沉积导致组织双折射增加。胶原纤维平面取向的分布显示OA样本中取向更具方向性，与I型胶原增加有关，而RA样本表现出异质的分子取向。这项研究表明，本研究中提出的成像技术、图像的定量分析以及导出的参数可作为疾病诊断的参考，有助于清晰地了解软骨中胶原纤维的降解情况。
