Over the past two decades, fibrillar collagen reorganization parameters such as the amount of collagen deposition, fiber angle and alignment have been widely explored in numerous studies. These parameters are now widely accepted as stromal biomarkers and linked to disease progression and survival time in several cancer types. Despite all these advances, there has not been a significant effort to make it possible for clinicians to explore these biomarkers without adding steps to the clinical workflow or by requiring high-cost imaging systems. In this paper, we evaluate previously described polychromatic polarization microscope (PPM) to visualize collagen fibers with an optically generated color representation of fiber orientation and alignment when inspecting the sample by a regular microscope with minor modifications. This system does not require stained slides, but is compatible with histological stains such as H&E. Consequently, it can be easily accommodated as part of regular pathology review of tissue slides, while providing clinically useful insight into stromal composition.

在过去的二十年中，纤维状胶原重组参数，如胶原沉积量、纤维角度和排列，已在众多研究中得到广泛探索。这些参数现在被广泛接受为基质生物标志物，并与几种癌症类型的疾病进展和存活时间相关。尽管取得了所有这些进展，但还没有做出重大努力，使临床医生能够在不增加临床工作流程的步骤或不需要高成本成像系统的情况下探索这些生物标志物。在本文中，我们评估了先前描述的多色偏光显微镜 (PPM)，以在通过常规显微镜检查样本时稍作修改时，通过光学生成的纤维取向和排列颜色表示来可视化胶原纤维。该系统不需要染色的载玻片，但与 H&E 等组织学染色剂兼容。因此，它可以很容易地作为组织切片常规病理检查的一部分，同时提供对基质成分的临床有用洞察。