Interest of polarized FT-IR imaging to characterize the collagen network in human skin

Issue title: European Conference on Spectroscopy of Biological Molecules XV, 25–30 August 2014, Oxford, UK

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Eklouh-Molinier, Christophe^; | Nguyen, The Thuong^; | Sebiskveradze, David^; | Feru, Jezabel | Bouland, Nicole | Terryn, Christine | Manfait, Michel^; | Brassart-Pasco, Sylvie | Piot, Olivier^{; ;}

Affiliations: Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Equipe MéDIAN-Biophotonique et Technologies pour la Santé, UFR de Pharmacie, Reims, France | CNRS UMR 7369, Matrice Extracellulaire et Dynamique Cellulaire, Reims, France | Laboratoire de Biochimie Médicale et de Biologie Moléculaire, CNRS UMR 7369 MEDyC, SFR Cap-Santé, UFR Médecine, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France | Laboratoire d'Anatomie et Cytologie Pathologiques, UFR Médecine, Reims, France | Plate-forme Imagerie Cellulaire et Tissulaire, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Reims, France

Note: [] Corresponding author: Olivier Piot, UFR Pharmacie, 51096 Reims, France. Tel.: +33 3 26 91 81 28; E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: BACKGROUND: During pathological and/or physiological processes, such as tumoral progression or aging, human skin undergoes molecular and structural changes mainly due to alterations of dermal structural proteins such as type I collagen. These modifications in dermis are probably due to collagen fibers rearrangement and reorientation which have not been thoroughly studied up to now. FT-IR (Fourier transform infrared) microspectroscopy associated to polarization measurement appears as an interesting method to determine in situ the alignment of type I collagen fibers. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, two different clustering algorithms were applied to determine different layers in human skin. Besides, we used polarized FT-IR imaging to evaluate the molecular organization of dermal collagen. METHODS: To do this, a cryosection of skin from 48-year-old woman was analyzed. Acquired FT-IR images were firstly processed using K-means and fuzzy C-means (FCM). FCM was chosen on polarized FT-IR images in order to highlight the molecular orientation of dermal collagen fibrils. The ratio of Amide I/Amide II bands integrated intensities was computed in order to assess the orientation of collagen fibrils. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: This methodology permitted to reveal the potential of polarized FT-IR microspectroscopy for the characterization of type I collagen network in human skin. Our approach could help to find innovative applications in dermatology as well as in cosmetics.

Keywords: Polarized FT-IR imaging, type I collagen, collagen orientation, clustering methods

DOI: 10.3233/BSI-140076

Journal: Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 281-286, 2014