In Vivo Imaging of Cutaneous DCs in Mice

Varieties of cells orchestrate immune responses. To capture such dynamic phenomena, intravital imaging is an important technique, and it may provide substantial information that is not available using conventional histological analyses. Multiphoton microscopy enables the direct, three-dimensional, and minimally invasive imaging of biological samples with high spatiotemporal resolution, and it has now become the leading method for in vivo imaging studies. Here we describe a basic method for in vivo imaging of dendritic cells (DCs) in the mouse ear skin using multiphoton microscopy.