Second-harmonic generation （SHG） microscopy is a recently developed nonlinear optical imaging modality for imaging tissue structures with submicron resolution and is a potent tool for visualizing pathological effects of diseases. In this letter, we present our investigation on the influence of van Gieson＇s （VG） alcoholic pierofuchsin staining on SHG in type I collagen （from tendon-rich C57BL/6）. Multi-channel imaging and spectra analysis show that the strong SHG signal produced in fresh collagen type I fiber has been greatly suppressed after VG staining, which indicates that staining may induce the structural or characteristic changes of SHG-dependent crystal formed by collagen constituents, such as glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline.
This paper first demonstrates second-harmonic generation （SHG） in the intact cell nucleus, which acts as an optical indicator of DNA malignancy in prostate glandular epithelial cells. Within a scanning region of 2.7 μm×2.7μm in cell nuclei, SHG signals produced from benign prostatic hyperplasia （BPH） and prostate carcinoma （PC） tissues （mouse model C57BL/6） have been investigated. Statistical analyses （t test） of a total of 405 measurements （204 nuclei from BPH and 201 nuclei from PC） show that SHG signals from BPH and PC have a distinct difference （p 〈 0.05）, suggesting a potential optical method of revealing very early malignancy in prostate glandular epithelial cells based upon induced biochemical and/or biophysical modifications in DNA.
