Non-Invasive Approaches

Scaffolds are made of biodegradable materials in tissue engineering to enable tissue growth, ECM elaboration, and the final maturation or conversion of the implanted construct into functional, native tissue. The remodelling process is dynamic and complex, reliant on factors such as the host implant location, inflammatory response, mechanical environment, and disease status, to name a few. Despite the complexity of the problem, scaffold design principles allow some general alternatives in terms of chemistry and processing to regulate degradation, provided there is enough in vivo data to guide such design improvements. Non-invasive and non-destructive imaging technologies to examine implants in situ in a timely manner are crucial with the rapid expansion of biomaterial discovery and associated efforts to bring such discoveries into the clinic. Structure, mechanical, and biological changes such as scaffold degradation, mechanical strength, cell infiltration, extracellular matrix creation, and vascularization, to mention a few, are all part of the essential multidimensional information. Ultrasound imaging can be an excellent tool for both preclinical and clinical applications due to its inherent advantages of non-invasiveness and non-destructiveness.