Detecting collagen fibrils' structure in ovarian cancer using second harmonic generation microscopy

摘要

Ovarian cancers have the highest mortality rate of all gynecologic cancers. Many researchers have found significant modifications in the morphology of collagen fibers in ovarian tumors. Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) is considered to have the potential to probe the structure of collagen fibrils within tissues. However, how the structure of collagen fibrils impacts the SHG remains to be solved. In this paper, Fourier transformation was adopted to analyze the quasi-phase matching, which is critical to the efficient generation of SHG. Then, the intensities of forward and backward SHG can be calculated. Moreover, two types of distribution models of collagen fibrils were built for normal ovaries and high-grade serous tumors. The intensity ratios of forward and backward SHG calculated from our models were a good fit to the measured ones. Therefore, our models are helpful for understanding the structure of ovaries at the fibril level.