ARUP; ISBN: 978-0-9562121-5-3 - CMBBE 2012 - Cardiff University

Figure 2 microscopic image of fascicle with lens magnification of 10X
2D cross sectional microscopic images of fascicle are stacked together to form 3D
representation of cell formation in fascicle. This is done using MATLAB software and a
sample is shown in Figure 3. Plotting 3D images of cell formation (similar to figure 3)
for different global strain together (on the same axes) allows the visual detection of the
global type of deformation pattern in samples. However for exact measurement of strain
and displacement distribution, image registration is needed.
Figure 3 Three Dimensional (3D) representations of tenocyte nuclei within typical
fascicle
5. COMPARISSON OF 2D AND 3D RESULTS
As mentioned in the previous sections, the cell nuclei are used as identification markers
in the image analysis process. 2D registration has been attempted initially to study strain
distribution in tendon fascicle. One major difficulty in 2D method is to find the best
cross sections (at different global strain) in the images for registration purpose. This is
due to the fact that each cell (sampling points) appears in different cross section through
the depth of tendon. Also non isometric shape of cells, results in different size of