Advances in Fractal Analysis of the Biological Tissues Images Obtained by Using Laser Scanning Microscopy

It is known that the collagen is a fibrous protein which represents one third of the proteins in the human body. It is the main component of the skin. The cancer development, including melanoma is strongly correlated with the modification of the collagen structure. Since collagen has a very good second harmonic signal, and infrared radiation used for second harmonic generation (SHG) deeply penetrates in the human skin, it makes SHG microscopy an excellent tool for a qualitative investigation of the collagen structures. It is a non-invasive and label free technique. The fractal dimension measures the rate of addition of structural detail with increasing magnification serving as a quantifier of complexity. In our work we present a fractal analysis on the second harmonic images of the three skin layers for both normal and dysplastic areas.