Near-Infrared Optical Imaging for Monitoring the Regeneration of Osteogenic Tissue-Engineered Constructs

Abstract Millions of cases of bone injury or loss due to trauma, osteoporosis, and cancer occur in the United States each year. Because bone is limited in its ability to regenerate, alternative therapy approaches are needed. Bone tissue engineering has the potential to correct musculoskeletal disorders through the development of cell-based substitutes for osteogenic tissue replacement. Multiple medical imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) were investigated recently; these techniques are able to provide useful information on the anatomical and structural changes of developing bone. However, there is a need for noninvasive approaches to evaluate biochemical constituents and consequent compositional development associated with growing osteogenic constructs. In this study, near-infrared (NIR) optical imaging with a bone-specific NIR-targeted probe, IRDye® 800CW BoneTag™ (800CW BT), was applied in this study to longitudinally visualize regions of mineralization of tissue-engineered bo...