Computerized quantification of collagen alignment in nonimmobilized and immobilized healing ligaments

Author

Rangayyan, R.M. ; Liu, Z.-Q. ; MacFarlane, B.J. ; Edwards, P. ; Frank, C.B.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Surg., Calgary Univ., Alta., Canada

fYear

1988

fDate

4-7 Nov. 1988

Firstpage

269

Abstract

A ligament heals by production and remodeling of collagen in scar tissue. Remodeling includes realignment of collagen fibrils. A computer technique has been developed to quantitatively analyze collagen alignment. With this method, the remodeling of collagen in immobilized midsubstance injuries of the rabbit knee medial collateral ligament were compared with that in nonimmobilized rabbits. The nonimmobilized scar at 3 and 6 weeks had significantly greater randomness and dispersion of collagen fibrils than normal ligament tissue (p<0.05). However, at 14 weeks of nonimmobilization and at all intervals of immobilization, the collagen fibril alignment of the healing scar was not significantly different than normal ligament. These results suggest that short-term immobilization allows earlier collagen realignment in rabbit medial collateral ligament scar.<>

Keywords

biological techniques and instruments; biology computing; proteins; collagen alignment; collagen fibrils; immobilized healing ligaments; medial collateral ligament; midsubstance injuries; rabbit knee; scar tissue;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 1988. Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE

Conference_Location

New Orleans, LA, USA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-0785-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEMBS.1988.94511

Filename

94511