1. Characteristic X-ray absorptiometry applied to the assessment of tissue-engineered cartilage development
- Author
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Ryo Kosaka, Tomokazu Numano, Yuko Fujihara, Yoshio Shirasaki, Kazuhiro Homma, Shota Kuribayashi, Koji Hyodo, Naotaka Nitta, Masaki Misawa, Kazuto Hoshi, and Kazuhiko Hayashi
- Subjects
Radiation ,Materials science ,Tissue Engineering ,Flexural modulus ,Cartilage ,Stiffness ,Condensed Matter Physics ,Chondrocyte ,Extracellular matrix ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Absorptiometry, Photon ,Chondrocytes ,Tissue engineering ,Attenuation coefficient ,Elastic Modulus ,medicine ,Humans ,Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and imaging ,Electrical and Electronic Engineering ,medicine.symptom ,Instrumentation ,Elastic modulus ,Cells, Cultured ,Biomedical engineering - Abstract
BACKGROUND Transmission and tomographic X-ray measurements are useful in assessing bone structures, but only a few studies have examined cartilage growth because of the poor contrast in conventional X-ray imaging. OBJECTIVE In this study, we attempted to use the linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) as a metric of tissue-engineered cartilage development, which would be useful in high-throughput screening of cartilage products. METHODS Assuming that the LAC is related to the amount of extracellular matrix (ECM) in terms of the density and its atomic components, we measured X-ray absorption through tissue-engineered cartilage constructs. Characteristic X-ray beams from a molybdenum microfocus X-ray tube were employed to avoid beam hardening. The correlation of the LAC with mechanical properties was analyzed for verification. RESULTS The LAC was higher for chondrocyte constructs and lower for fibroblast-dominant constructs and was consistent with the quantification of toluidine blue staining, which is a proof of ECM production. The LAC was positively correlated with the bending modulus but negatively correlated with the dynamic elastic modulus and stiffness, possibly because of the remaining scaffold. CONCLUSIONS The LAC has the potential to be used as a metric of development of tissue-engineered cartilage. However, the calcified regions should be excluded from analysis to avoid decreasing the correlation between the LAC and the amount of ECM.
- Published
- 2015