Figure 3
Brillouin imaging of healthy bladder walls at different ages of the adult rat. (A) Schematic representation of the experiment. Rats were sacrificed at different time points. (B) Representative healthy bladder DIC image and Brillouin shift maps of the urothelium, lamina propria, and muscle layer belonging to rats sacrificed at month 2, 4 and 6 (i.e., 4, 6 or 8 months old rats, respectively). Scale bars = 20 µm. Different layer boundaries are indicated by dotted black lines. (C) Brillouin shifts distributions across different layers and at different time points. (D) Brillouin shifts histograms of medians of aging rats, divided by tissue layer. N = 3 rats per time point, each tissue layer of each single rat was characterized by over 4 Brillouin maps of at least 150 × 40 μm2. Brillouin shift of Lamina propria (p = 0.021) and Muscle layer (p = 0.026) significantly increased at month 4 with respect to month 2. (Mean ± SEM. ° p < 0.05, Kruskall-Wallis test followed by Dunn’s multiple-comparison test).
