Imaging Thick Tissues with Confocal Microscopy

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) can be used to obtain optical sections of thick tissues that are relatively free of interfering autofluorescence, and that do not strongly scatter or absorb either the excitation or emission light. This chapter provides protocols used to examine three such tissues: the cornea of the eye, the buccal mucosa (which lines the inner cheek), and the nasal respiratory epithelium. Although in each case our overall motivation was to study the transport of drugs or model compounds across the particular epithelium, the approaches taken were quite different.