Abstract
The insight of biological microstructures is at the basis of understanding the mechanical features and the potential pathologies of tissues, like the blood vessels. Different techniques are available for this purpose, like the Small Angle Light Scattering (SALS) approach. The SALS method has the advantage of being fast and non-destructive, however investigation of its physical principles is still required. Within this work, a numerical study for SALS irradiation of soft biological fibrous tissues was carried out through in-silico simulations based on a Monte Carlo approach to evaluate the effect of the thickness of the specimen. Additionally, the numerical results were validated with an optical setup based on SALS technique for the characterization of fibrous samples with dedicated tests on four 3D-printed specimens with different fibers architectures. The simulations revealed two main regions of interest according to the thickness (thk) of the analyzed media: a Fraunhofer region (thk < 0.6 mm) and a Multiple Scattering region (thk > 1 mm). Semi-quantitative information about the tissue anisotropy was successfully gathered by analyzing the scattered light spot. Moreover, the numerical results revealed a remarkable coherence with the experimental data, both in terms of mean orientation and dispersion of fibers.
Highlights
Fibrous structure plays an important role in the function and behavior of both healthy and diseased biological tissues
The knowledge of the microstructure of fibrous tissue remains pivotal in different applications and different optical techniques are presented in the state of art
It was possible to observe that the grade of anisotropy of the medium could be qualitatively assessed even for large thicknesses by inspecting the fluence map
Summary
Fibrous structure plays an important role in the function and behavior of both healthy and diseased biological tissues. Structural changes in collagen and elastin fibers are linked to biomechanical remodeling of many dense connective tissues which are composed of extracellullar networks of collagen and elastin fibers embedded in a ground matrix [1]. A notable example of these tissues is given by the blood vessels, in which the formation of aneurysmatic bulges is strictly connected to microstructural components degradation and, mechanical properties modifications [2]. The quantification of fiber architecture represents an important step in understanding the mechanics and the constitutive relationships of biological tissues in healthy and diseased state. Numerous methods were developed for the investigation of fibrous structure of biological tissues. The small angle X-Ray scattering [3,4], the elastic scattering spectroscopy [5,6] and the microscopic elliptical polarimetry [7,8]
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