Chen Chao-Wei, Betz Martha W, Fisher John P, Paek Andrew, Chen Yu
1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland , College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Tissue Eng Part C Methods. 2011 Jan;17(1):101-12. doi: 10.1089/ten.TEC.2010.0072. Epub 2010 Sep 6.
A simple porogen-leaching method to fabricate macroporous cyclic acetal hydrogel cell scaffolds is presented. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was applied for nondestructive imaging and quantitative characterization of the scaffold structures. High-resolution OCT reveals the microstructures of the engineered tissue scaffolds in three dimensions. It also enables subsequent image processing to investigate quantitatively several key morphological design parameters for macroporous scaffolds, including the volume porosity, pore interconnectivity, and pore size. Two image-processing algorithms were adapted: three-dimensional labeling was applied to assess the interconnectivity, and erosion was applied to assess the pore size. Scaffolds with different design parameters were imaged, characterized, and compared. OCT imaging and image processing successfully discriminated scaffolds made from different formulations in terms of volume porosity, interconnectivity, and pore size. The cell viability and their spread across the scaffolds were confirmed by the fluorescence microscopy co-registered with OCT.
本文提出了一种制备大孔环状缩醛水凝胶细胞支架的简单致孔剂浸出法。光学相干断层扫描（OCT）用于支架结构的无损成像和定量表征。高分辨率OCT可在三维空间中揭示工程组织支架的微观结构。它还能进行后续图像处理，以定量研究大孔支架的几个关键形态设计参数，包括体积孔隙率、孔隙连通性和孔径。采用了两种图像处理算法：应用三维标记评估连通性，应用腐蚀评估孔径。对具有不同设计参数的支架进行成像、表征和比较。OCT成像和图像处理成功地根据体积孔隙率、连通性和孔径区分了由不同配方制成的支架。通过与OCT共配准的荧光显微镜证实了细胞活力及其在支架上的扩散。
