ABSTRACT
The skin is the largest organ of the body, making it an ideal target tissue for microvascular network and immune response monitoring. However, the turbid nature of skin severely limits visualization by decreasing imaging resolution as well as imaging depth. The rapid development of the tissue optical clearing technique has led to a booming interest in noninvasive high-resolution biological observation, since it can significantly enhance the performance of optical imaging by reducing the scattering of tissue. So far, the tissue optical clearing technique can not only make tissues, organs, and even bodies transparent in vitro, but can also establish a window for structural and functional monitoring in vivo. This chapter begins with the introduction to skin structure and the mechanism of skin optical clearing, and then covers three kinds of methods to enhance the efficacy of in vivo skin optical clearing: physical enhancement methods, chemical enhancement methods, and the combination of both. Finally, current achievements in the area of in vivo skin optical clearing window–assisted blood flow and cell imaging will be introduced.
