Measuring three‐dimensional strain distribution in tendon

Abstract

SummaryTendons are tough fibrous tissues that facilitate skeletal movement by transferring muscular force to bone. Studies into the effects of mechanical stress on tendons have shown that these can either accelerate healing or cause tendon injuries depending on the load applied. It is known that local strain magnitude and direction play an important role in tendon remodelling and also failure, and different techniques to study strain distribution have been proposed. Image registration and processing techniques are among the recently employed methods. In this study, a novel three-dimensional image processing technique using the Sheffield Image Registration Toolkit is introduced to study local strain and displacement distribution in tendon. The results show that the local normal strain values in the loading axis are smaller than the global applied load, and fibre sliding was detected as a dominant mechanism for transferring the applied load within tendon. However, results from different samples suggest three distinct modes of deformation during loading, as some show only parallel sliding of fibres in respect to the loading axis, whereas others are twisted or deflected in directions transverse to the loading axis. The proposed 3D image registration method is essential for analysing this out-of-plane movement, which cannot be detected using a standard 2D method.

Shear load transfer in high and low stress tendons

“…T. Thorpe, Klemt, et al 2013). Fascicles exhibit a helical organization within the whole tendon structure as well (Kalson et al 2012; Kannus 2000; Khodabakhshi et al 2013). …”

“…Thorpe et al 2012). Fiber sliding is also shown as a dominant mechanism of motion during tendon stretch (Khodabakhshi et al 2013; Li et al 2013), particularly in more energy storing, flexor tendons of porcine (Screen, Toorani, and Shelton 2013) and primarily positional, extensor tendons of equine (C. T. Thorpe, Klemt, et al 2013) where it has been demonstrated that more fiber sliding occurs than their positional or energy storing counterparts, respectively.…”

Precision of Digital Volume Correlation Approaches for Strain Analysis in Bone Imaged with Micro-Computed Tomography at Different Dimensional Levels

“…This global DVC (Dall' Ara et al, 2014) consists in computing the displacement map by using the Sheffield Image Registration Toolkit (ShIRT) (Barber and Hose, 2005;Barber et al, 2007;Khodabakhshi et al, 2013). With BoneDVC, a grid with selectable nodal spacing (NS, or subvolume, or grid size) is superimposed to the images to be registered.…”

Biomechanical coupling facilitates spinal neural tube closure in mouse embryos

“…Disadvantages of current DIC methodologies applied to biological tissues include the requirement for a high-resolution dot pattern, "noisy" data owing to errors in automated dot mapping, and the limitation of producing 2D/pseudo-3D analyses. Adaptations of DIC-like methodologies to biological tissues include the use of fluorescent-labeled cells instead of preplaced dots as the mapped entity (27).…”