Re-endothelialization of vascular lumen after endovascular procedures is a critical healing milestone and is subjected to routine pathological evaluation during preclinical safety assessment of new cardiovascular devices. Gross evaluation, microscopic evaluation, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are the methods of choice for evaluation of vascular surfaces. In this article, we present a new digital imaging approach of surface topography herein referred to as topographical digital microscopy (TDM) that is able to meet the objectives of endovascular healing assessment in a single instrumental platform combined with the same sample preparation techniques as for histology or SEM. This platform is taking advantage of digitally managed illumination, X-Y stitching, and Z-stacking to enable direct optical imaging of tissue surfaces at levels of details ranging from the macroscopic to the cellular level. This technique is enabled by advances in digital optical microscopy and provides images in color and 3 dimensions that can help in the analysis, especially in distinguishing biologically meaningful observations from technical preparation artifacts and in visualizing surface topography.
Keywords: digital 3D microscopy; endothelialization; endothelium; scanning electron microscopy (SEM); tissue macroscopy; topographic microscopy; topographical digital microscopy (TDM).