Determination of the collagen fiber 'Brushing direction' in articular cartilage by conical-scan polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography

摘要

A new imaging technique is presented by introducing the concept of conical scan to the variable-incidenc-angle polarimetry (VIA) previously developed by our group. The technique would facilitate the translating of the VIA technique to the clinic by simplifying the requirements of measurements in two orthogonal planes by using a conical scan protocol. Conical scan PS-OCT images could illustrate directly the azimuthal angle of the collage fibers in birefringent tissue, which was validated by measurements on a bovine tendon. We have showed the unique technique can be used to locate the "brushing direction" of collagen fibers in articular cartilage. Measuring this direction over the cartilage surface could potentially help designing of tissue-engineering scaffolds for cartilage repair.