Three‐dimensional intravital imaging in bone research

Abstract

Intravital imaging has emerged as a novel and efficient tool for visualization of in situ dynamics of cellular behaviors and cell‐microenvironment interactions in live animals, based on desirable microscopy techniques featuring high resolutions, deep imaging and low phototoxicity. Intravital imaging, especially based on multi‐photon microscopy, has been used in bone research for dynamics visualization of a variety of physiological and pathological events at the cellular level, such as bone remodeling, hematopoiesis, immune responses and cancer development, thus, providing guidance for elucidating novel cellular mechanisms in bone biology as well as guidance for new therapies. This review is aimed at interpreting development and advantages of intravital imaging in bone research, and related representative discoveries concerning bone matrices, vessels, and various cells types involved in bone physiologies and pathologies. Finally, current limitations, further refinement, and extended application of intravital imaging in bone research are concluded.

New insights on the reparative cells in bone regeneration and repair

“…If such a technique is combined with tissue‐clearing techniques such as CUBIC (clear, unobstructed brain/body imaging cocktails and computational analysis) (Susaki et al ., 2015) and SHANEL (small micelle‐mediated human organ efficient clearing and labeling) (Zhao et al ., 2020), researchers could comprehensively map cells in the whole body of mice or large intact human organs at the cellular level. Intravital bone‐imaging technology using multiphoton microscopy is a novel and powerful tool that will enable us to visualize the spatiotemporal cellular behaviours of SSCs and their offspring in their natural tissue microenvironment (Liu, Yuan, & Zhang, 2019b). scRNA‐seq will further deepen our awareness of distinct SSC populations and their niches, interrelationships and cellular and molecular mechanisms (Baryawno et al ., 2019; Tikhonova et al ., 2019; Wolock et al ., 2019; Baccin et al ., 2020; Matsushita et al ., 2020).…”