Fluorescence spectroscopy of biological tissue: single- and two-photon excitation

摘要

Endogenous fluorophores, such as NAD(P)H/FAD and collagen/elastin, have been regarded as in vivo quantitative fluorescence biomarkers for precancerous changes of epithelial tissue. However, the fluorescence signal measured by conventional spectroscopy is a mixture of autofluorescence from the epithelium and deep structures. The dominant fluorescence of collagen/elastin from connective tissue in deep layers creates serious challenge for extracting the epithelial fluorescence of NAD(P)H/FAD that is weak, but important for the characterization of tissue pathology. In this work, we instrumented a confocal fluorescence spectroscopy system and a two-photon excited fluorescence spectroscopy system to measure the depth-resolved single- and two-photon fluorescence spectra from the rabbit esophageal tissues. The excitation wavelengths were 349 nm and 735 nm, respectively. Both systems provided good optical sectioning. The information obtained from depth-resolved fluorescence was generally consistent with the histology of the examined tissue sample. The NAD(P)H signals from epithelial layers were clearly separated from the collagen signal from deep layers. In addition, strong second harmonic generations given by collagen fibers were observed. This work demonstrates that depth-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy may produce more accurate information on the diagnosis of tissue pathology.