Ravanfar Mohammadreza, Yao Gang
Appl Opt. 2019 Mar 10;58(8):2021-2027. doi: 10.1364/AO.58.002021.
Optical birefringence is a valuable parameter in evaluating collagen organization and assessing collagen degeneration in articular cartilage. A uniaxial birefringent model is implied when using existing methods such as polarized light microscopy in characterizing birefringence in cartilage. However, some studies suggest the existence of a sheet-like collagen organization in articular cartilage, which requires a biaxial birefringence model to describe. In this study, we applied a multi-incident birefringence measurement procedure to investigate the biaxial birefringence in articular cartilage. The results supported the existence of a small yet significant biaxial birefringence effect, which was in agreement with the expectation from a sheet-like collagen organization.
光学双折射是评估关节软骨中胶原蛋白组织和评估胶原蛋白退变的一个重要参数。在使用偏振光显微镜等现有方法表征软骨中的双折射时，隐含着单轴双折射模型。然而，一些研究表明关节软骨中存在片状胶原蛋白组织，这需要用双轴双折射模型来描述。在本研究中，我们应用了一种多入射角双折射测量方法来研究关节软骨中的双轴双折射。结果支持了存在一个虽小但显著的双轴双折射效应，这与片状胶原蛋白组织的预期相符。
