Imaging of artificial cartilage with optical coherence tomography

Abstract

Tissue Engineering methods have become more and more relevant for orthopedic applications, especially for cartilage repair with autologous chondrocytes. In order to monitor the healing process and bonding between cartilage and the artificial implant, the boundary zone must be imaged non-invasively, for example with OCT. Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a short coherent light based measuring technique which allows the generation of cross-section images of semi-transparent media with a depth resolution of up to 5 µm and a measuring depth of 1-2 mm. Especially for the imaging of cartilage OCT offers new diagnostic possibilities, as conventional methods such as ultrasound and x-ray imaging often do not yield satisfactory resolution or contrast. In this paper, an OCT measurement setup for imaging of human cartilage tissue with OCT is demonstrated, allowing a detection of local damaging and lesions. Furthermore, both compressed and uncompressed collagen gel pads were implanted into human cartilage samples. OCT measurements are presented for samples in different stages of growth, focusing on the boundary zones. Comparisons with histologies are shown, demonstrating the ability of OCT to enable a monitoring of the healing progress in tissue engineering based therapy.