The architecture of cartilage: Elemental maps and scanning transmission ion microscopy/tomography

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Reinert ; Tilo ; Reibetanz ; Uta ; Schwertner ; Michael ; Vogt ; Jü ; rgen ; Butz ; Tilman ; Sakellariou ; Arthur
• 关键词：87.64.-t ; 87.58.Vr ; 07.78.+s ; Cartilage ; Collagen ; Nuclear microscopy ; Micro-PIXE ; STIM tomography
• 刊名：Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
• 出版年：2002
• 出版时间：April, 2002
• 年：2002
• 卷：188
• 期：1-4
• 页码：1-8
• 全文大小：381 K

文摘

Articular cartilage is not just a jelly-like cover of the bone within the joints but a highly sophisticated architecture of hydrated macromolecules, collagen fibrils and cartilage cells. Influences on the physiological balance due to age-related or pathological changes can lead to malfunction and subsequently to degradation of the cartilage. Many activities in cartilage research are dealing with the architecture of joint cartilage but have limited access to elemental distributions. Nuclear microscopy is able to yield spatially resolved elemental concentrations, provides density information and can visualise the arrangement of the collagen fibres. The distribution of the cartilage matrix can be deduced from the elemental and density maps. The findings showed a varying content of collagen and proteoglycan between zones of different cell maturation. Zones of higher collagen content are characterised by aligned collagen fibres that can form tubular structures. Recently we focused on STIM tomography to investigate the three dimensional arrangement of the collagen structures.