Monitoring of collagen shrinkage by use of second harmonic generation microscopy

Thermal treatment induced collagen shrinkage has a great number of applications in medical practice. Clinically, the there is lack of reliable non-invasive methods to quantify the shrinkage. Overt treatment by heat application can lead to devastating results. We investigate the serial changes of collagen shrinkage by thermal treatment of rat tall tendons. The change in length is correlated with the finding in second harmonic generation microscopy and histology. Rat tall tendon shortens progressively during initial thermal treatment. After a certain point in time, the length then remains almost constant despite further thermal treatment. The intensity of second harmonic generation signals also progressively decreases initially and then remains merely detectable upon further thermal treatment. It prompts us to develop a mathematic model to quantify the dependence of collagen shrinkage on changes of SHG intensity. Our results show that SHG intensity can be used to predict the degree of collagen shrinkage during thermal treatment for biomedical applications.