3-D Morphology and Viability Status Imaging of Tissue Culture

Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) proposes to develop a multimodal measurement tool to provide an assessment of the overall state of engineered soft tissue and its maturity for transplantation. The proposed multimodal system will provide continuous, real time, nondestructive, quantitative assessment of growing soft tissue cultures by measuring several critical parameters that are indicative of tissue health, namely: tissue morphology using optical coherence tomography (OCT), ultrasound (US) for deeper imaging, and tissue viability by means of optical fluorescence excitation. This multimodal technique, combined with sophisticated image processing tools, will be capable of non-invasively assessing the neovascularization, cell state, viability, and microstructure of the tissue, rendering a quantitative indication of the tissue's health as it grows. IOS's proposed multimodal optical diagnostic probe will add a viability imaging capability to the structural, morphological imaging OCT probe currently being developed. The proposed novel diagnostics tool will permit the complete characterization of healthy and unhealthy tissue on the basis of tissue density, as well as molecular composition.