Technical Program

Paper Detail

Paper:	SU-AM-PS2.8
Session:	Optical Imaging and Analysis
Time:	Sunday, April 9, 10:50 - 12:10
Presentation:	Poster
Title:	Modeling and Characterizing Collagen Fiber Bundles
Authors:	Pierre Elbischger; University of Applied Sciences
	Fernando Cacho; Graz University of Technology
	Horst Bischof; Graz University of Technology
	Gerhard Holzapfel; Graz University of Technology
Abstract:	Collagen fibers are prominent constituents of many soft tissues. The fibers are able to carry load along their fiber axis, and, therefore, their structural arrangement render the mechanical behavior of biological tissue anisotropic. In some of the tissues, such as, e.g., blood vessels, tendons and ligaments, the fibers form fiber bundles. Structure based biomechanical models of soft tissues strongly rely on a clear understanding of the underlying collagen fiber bundle structure and require precise quantitative structural information. The paper presents a novel fiber bundle model that satisfactorily explains the observed bundle structure and reveals meaningful parameters for bundle characterization. The model is capable to describe a wide variety of natural bundle structures. It is shown, that the identified bundle parameters can be extracted from real histological images using computer vision algorithms. The generative nature of the model allows the creation of artificial fiber bundle images with characteristics very similar to real images.

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