Imaging Methods in Cell Biology

A special issue of Cells (ISSN 2073-4409). This special issue belongs to the section "Cell Methods".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2025 | Viewed by 3323

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy
Interests: mitochondria; autophagy; extracellular matrix; electron microscopy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Biomedical Sciences for Health, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy
Interests: collagen turnover; extracellular matrix remodeling; epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition; fibrosis; tendon biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As early as the 17th century, Galileo considered imaging as “the eyes of science”. Nowadays, several imaging techniques provide researchers with a wealth of specific and quantitative imaging information about molecules and cells, and their continuous development and improvement are crucial in disseminating new knowledge in various fields of life sciences. New imaging methods and instrumentation have improved resolution, signal detection, data collection, and manipulation for each sample type, enabling the visualization of a wide range multidimensional and multiparametric data.

The combination of whole-slide imaging at single-cell resolution in spatial biology studies allows for the visualization and quantitative analysis of biomarker expression and co-expression, and multiplexed methods increase the number of disease-specific biomarkers that can be detected simultaneously.

This allows for the dynamic knowledge of biological system components and their respective cellular processes, bridging the gap between morphological and molecular approaches, and can provide a potent tool to diagnose patients, establish the efficacy of therapeutic treatments, and monitor the recurrence of disease. Indeed, the ever-increasing diffusion and precision of imaging tools and the increasingly in-depth knowledge of biological processes allow the development of systems biology models that aim to have real predictive capabilities.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to shed light on the recent advances and development of imaging methods and approaches in different fields of cell biology research.

Prof. Claudia Moscheni
Prof. Nicoletta Gagliano
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • cellular organelles
  • molecular function
  • molecular interaction
  • disease- and drug-related subcellular phenomena
  • single-molecule imaging
  • light microscopy
  • electron microscopy
  • fluorescence microscopy
  • fluorescence correlation methods
  • fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM)
  • Raman microscopy
  • spatial biology

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 14876 KiB  
Article
Three-Dimensional Cell Culture Micro-CT Visualization within Collagen Scaffolds in an Aqueous Environment
by Sergey Tkachev, Natalia Chepelova, Gevorg Galechyan, Boris Ershov, Danila Golub, Elena Popova, Artem Antoshin, Aliia Giliazova, Sergei Voloshin, Yuri Efremov, Elena Istranova and Peter Timashev
Cells 2024, 13(15), 1234; https://doi.org/10.3390/cells13151234 - 23 Jul 2024
Viewed by 2941
Abstract
Among all of the materials used in tissue engineering in order to develop bioequivalents, collagen shows to be the most promising due to its superb biocompatibility and biodegradability, thus becoming one of the most widely used materials for scaffold production. However, current imaging [...] Read more.
Among all of the materials used in tissue engineering in order to develop bioequivalents, collagen shows to be the most promising due to its superb biocompatibility and biodegradability, thus becoming one of the most widely used materials for scaffold production. However, current imaging techniques of the cells within collagen scaffolds have several limitations, which lead to an urgent need for novel methods of visualization. In this work, we have obtained groups of collagen scaffolds and selected the contrasting agents in order to study pores and patterns of cell growth in a non-disruptive manner via X-ray computed microtomography (micro-CT). After the comparison of multiple contrast agents, a 3% aqueous phosphotungstic acid solution in distilled water was identified as the most effective amongst the media, requiring 24 h of incubation. The differences in intensity values between collagen fibers, pores, and masses of cells allow for the accurate segmentation needed for further analysis. Moreover, the presented protocol allows visualization of porous collagen scaffolds under aqueous conditions, which is crucial for the multimodal study of the native structure of samples. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Imaging Methods in Cell Biology)
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