Two-photon microscopy of dermal innervation in a human re-innervated model of skin

When skin is injured, innervation can be severely disrupted. The subsequent re-innervation processes are poorly understood notably because of the inability to image the full meandering course of nerves with their ramifications and endings from histological slices. In this letter, we report on two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF) microscopy of entire human skin explants re-innervated by rodent sensory neurons labelled with the styryl dye FM1-43. TPEF imaging of nerve fibres to a depth up to roughly 300 μm within the dermis was demonstrated, allowing three-dimensional reconstruction of the neural tree structure. Endogenous second-harmonic imaging of type I fibrillar collagen was performed in parallel to TPEF imaging using the same nonlinear microscope, revealing the path of the nerves through the dermis.