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

Tilo Reinert*, Uta Reibetanz, Michael Schwertner, Jürgen Vogt, Tilman Butz, Arthur Sakellariou

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    15 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1-8
    Number of pages8
    JournalNuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
    Volume188
    Issue number1-4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2002

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