FIG. 5.

MPM can be used to probe the organization of collagen fibers within the wall of the vessel. Although collagen fibers are difficult to identify in a longitudinal cross section of a tissue engineered vessel with traditional histology (A), MPM readily visualizes these fibers in optical sections (B, C). Although these images do not recapitulate all of the detail provided by traditional techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (D, E), the resulting images effectively convey important structural information related to fiber number and orientation, without the challenges of tissue processing. Scale bars=50 μm (A–C); 1 μm (D); 20 μm (E).