Multifunctional in vivo imaging for monitoring wound healing using swept-source polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Wound healing involves a complex and dynamic biological process in response to tissue injury. Monitoring of the cascade of cellular events is useful for wound management and treatment. The aim of this study is to demonstrate the potential of multifunctional polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) to longitudinally monitor the self-healing process in a murine cutaneous wound model.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: A multi-functional PS-OCT system based on swept source OCT configuration (1,310 nm central wavelength) was designed to obtain simultaneously microstructural, blood perfusion, and birefringent information of a biological tissue in vivo. A 1-mm-diameter wound was generated in a mouse pinna with a complete biopsy punch. Afterwards, the self-healing process of the injured tissue was observed every week over 6-week period using the multifunctional system to measure changes in the tissue birefringence. Further OCT angiography (OCTA) was used in post data processing to obtain blood perfusion information over the injured tissue.

RESULTS: Three complementary images indicating the changes in anatomical, vascular, and birefringent information of tissue around wound were simultaneously provided from a 3-dimensional (3-D) PS-OCT data set during the wound repair over 1 month. Specifically, inflammatory and proliferative phases of wound healing were characterized by thickened epidermal tissue (from OCT images) and angiogenesis (from OCT angiography images) around wound. Also, it was observed that the regenerating tissues had highly realigned birefringent structures (from PS-OCT images).

CONCLUSION: This preliminary study suggests that the proposed multi-functional imaging modality has a great potential to improve the understanding of wound healing through non-invasive, serial monitoring of vascular and tissue responses to injury. Lasers Surg. Med. 50:213-221, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.