The loss of organization of the corneal collagen lattice induced by photothermal effects was analyzed by using second-harmonic generation (SHG) imaging. Porcine cornea samples were treated with low-power laser irradiation in order to get localized areas of tissue disorganization. The disorder induced within the irradiated area of corneal stroma was quantified by means of Discrete Fourier Transform, auto-correlation and entropy analyses of the SHG images. Polarization modulated SHG measurements allowed to probe the changes in the structural anisotropy of sub-micron hierarchical levels of the stromal collagen. Our results emphasize the great potential of the SHG imaging to detect subtle modifications in the collagen assembly. The proposed analytical methods may be used to track several genetic, pathologic, accidental or surgical-induced disorder states of biological tissues.

Biocompatible chitosan/gold nanorods films are fabricated and tested as laser‐activatable adhesives. When exposed to near‐infrared laser light the nanoparticles carry out efficient photothermal conversion, which activates the polar groups of chitosan strands and mediates functional adhesion with a biological tissue. This technology may enable a number of key applications in medicine including tissue repair, wound dressing and drug delivery.

When investigated under high concentration conditions, hyaluronan (HA) solutions in physiological saline are shown to generate stable superstructures. An abrupt change in the rheological properties observed on increasing the temperature suggests the breaking of certain cooperative bonds. The thermal disruption of the HA superstructure is accompanied by a sharp transition from a long- to a restricted-connectivity water structuring, which is interpreted as a concurrent transition from a stable to a temporary polymer network. The intermolecular associations are considered to be originated by hydrophobic interactions between the nonpolar groups of the polymer backbones.