The network structure of the corneal endothelium.

Abstract

A generic network model is applied to study the structure of the mammalian corneal endothelium. The model has been shown to reproduce the network properties of a wide range of systems, from low-dimensional inorganic glasses to colloidal nanoparticles deposited on a surface. Available extensive experimental microscopy results are analyzed and combined to highlight the behavior of two key metrics, the fraction of hexagonal rings (p6) and the coefficient of variation of the area. Their behavior is analyzed as a function of patient age, the onset of diabetes, and contact lens wearing status. Wearing contact lenses for ∼10 years is shown to change the endothelium structure by the equivalent of ∼30 years contact lens-free. Model network configurations are obtained using a Monte Carlo bond-switching algorithm, with the resulting topologies controlled by two potential model parameters (the bond and angular force constants) and the Monte Carlo temperature. The effect of systematically varying these parameters is investigated. In addition, the effect of constraining the ring size distribution is investigated. The networks generated with relatively weak bond force constants are shown to correlate best with the experimental information. The importance of extracting the full ring size distribution (rather than simply the fraction of hexagons) is discussed.