Imaging techniques to visualize 3D microscopic structure of blood vessel wall

Abstract

Wall thickening of the artery walls in response to hypertension is thought to be driven by the medial smooth muscle cells (SMCs) sensing stress applied to themselves. It is thus necessary to know the stress applied to the individual cells in the wall. The artery wall mainly composed of SMCs, elastin, and collagen, whose Young's moduli are 10-100 kPa, 600 kPa, and 1 GPa, respectively. These components are intertwined with each other in a dimension of ~10 um. Thus, stress distribution in the wall should be very much complicated at a microscopic level. To know the stress applied to each SMC, we need to know 3D microscopic structure in the wall. We have been studying the microscopic structure by combining a 3D internal structure microscope, a multi-photon microscope, and a tissue clearing technique. In this talk, we will introduce these techniques and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.