Yang Bin, Jan Ning-Jiun, Brazile Bryn, Voorhees Andrew, Lathrop Kira L, Sigal Ian A
Department of Ophthalmology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
J Biophotonics. 2018 Aug;11(8):e201700356. doi: 10.1002/jbio.201700356. Epub 2018 May 6.
Collagen fibers play a central role in normal eye mechanics and pathology. In ocular tissues, collagen fibers exhibit a complex 3-dimensional (3D) fiber orientation, with both in-plane (IP) and out-of-plane (OP) orientations. Imaging techniques traditionally applied to the study of ocular tissues only quantify IP fiber orientation, providing little information on OP fiber orientation. Accurate description of the complex 3D fiber microstructures of the eye requires quantifying full 3D fiber orientation. Herein, we present 3dPLM, a technique based on polarized light microscopy developed to quantify both IP and OP collagen fiber orientations of ocular tissues. The performance of 3dPLM was examined by simulation and experimental verification and validation. The experiments demonstrated an excellent agreement between extracted and true 3D fiber orientation. Both IP and OP fiber orientations can be extracted from the sclera and the cornea, providing previously unavailable quantitative 3D measures and insight into the tissue microarchitecture. Together, the results demonstrate that 3dPLM is a powerful imaging technique for the analysis of ocular tissues.
胶原纤维在正常眼部力学和病理学中起着核心作用。在眼部组织中，胶原纤维呈现出复杂的三维（3D）纤维取向，包括面内（IP）和面外（OP）取向。传统上用于研究眼部组织的成像技术仅能量化IP纤维取向，而关于OP纤维取向的信息很少。准确描述眼睛复杂的3D纤维微观结构需要量化完整的3D纤维取向。在此，我们介绍3dPLM，这是一种基于偏振光显微镜开发的技术，用于量化眼部组织的IP和OP胶原纤维取向。通过模拟以及实验验证和确认来检验3dPLM的性能。实验表明，提取的3D纤维取向与真实的3D纤维取向高度吻合。IP和OP纤维取向均可从巩膜和角膜中提取出来，提供了以前无法获得的定量3D测量结果，并深入了解了组织微结构。总之，结果表明3dPLM是一种用于分析眼部组织的强大成像技术。
