Osteoarthritis (OA) restricts the daily activities of patients and significantly decreases their quality of life. The development of non-invasive quantitative methods for properly diagnosing and evaluating the process of degeneration of articular cartilage due to OA is essential. Second harmonic generation (SHG) imaging enables the observation of collagen fibrils in live tissues or organs without staining. In the present study, we employed SHG imaging of the articular cartilage in OA model mice ex vivo. Consequently, three-dimensional SHG imaging with successive image processing and statistical analyses allowed us to successfully characterize histopathological changes in the articular cartilage consistently confirmed on histological analyses. The quantitative SHG imaging technique presented in this study constitutes a diagnostic application of this technology in the setting of OA.
