In tissue engineering and biomaterials research, reliable evaluation of cell adhesion and spatial distribution on fibrous scaffolds remains challenging. Synchrotron radiation-based Fourier transform infrared (SR-FTIR) microspectroscopy imaging provides a rapid, nondestructive, and label-free approach for mapping biochemical components through their characteristic functional groups. In this study, SR-FTIR imaging was employed as an analytical framework to evaluate NIH3T3 fibroblast adhesion and distribution on electrospun polylactic acid (PLA)/microcellulose fibrous scaffolds. Chemical mapping enabled direct visualization of cell localization on the fibers after 24 h of culture, while hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) revealed variations in cell distribution associated with microcellulose content. A qualitative distribution index derived from normalized cluster-based metrics across replicated mapped areas showed a decrease from 100.61 to 95.58, 10.74, and 42.64 for microcellulose contents of 0, 1, 5, and 10 wt %, respectively, indicating the most homogeneous cell distribution at 5 wt %. These results demonstrate that SR-FTIR microspectroscopy imaging is an effective tool for assessing cell–material interactions on electrospun fibrous scaffolds and provides a practical methodology for biomaterials evaluation in tissue engineering applications.
Chinnakorn et al. (Wed,) studied this question.