Journal
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY INTERFACE
Volume 10, Issue 80, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2012.0760
Keywords
collagen; artery; constitutive modelling; fibre orientation; optical clearing; second-harmonic generation
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Funding
- Austrian Science Funds (FWF) [I503-B11, SFB F3005 Lipotox]
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We present a novel approach allowing for a simple, fast and automated morphological analysis of three-dimensional image stacks (z-stacks) featuring fibrillar structures from optically cleared soft biological tissues. Five non-atherosclerotic tissue samples from human abdominal aortas were used to outline the multi-purpose methodology, applicable to various tissue types. It yields a three-dimensional orientational distribution of relative amplitudes, representing the original collagen fibre morphology, identifies regions of isotropy where no preferred fibre orientations are observed and determines structural parameters throughout anisotropic regions for the analysis and numerical modelling of biomechanical quantities such as stress and strain. Our method combines optical tissue clearing with second-harmonic generation imaging, Fourier-based image analysis and maximum-likelihood estimation for distribution fitting. With a new sample preparation method for arteries, we present, for the first time to our knowledge, a continuous three-dimensional distribution of collagen fibres throughout the entire thickness of the aortic wall, revealing novel structural and organizational insights into the three arterial layers.
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