Open AccessRapid three-dimensional quantification of voxel-wise collagen fiber orientation
Author(s) -
Zhiyi Liu,
Kyle P. Quinn,
Lucía Speroni,
Lisa M. Arendt,
Charlotte Kuperwasser,
Carlos Sonnenschein,
Ana M. Soto,
Irene Georgakoudi
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - Uncategorized
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.6.002294
Subject(s) - voxel , orientation (vector space) , computer science , artificial intelligence , pattern recognition (psychology) , fiber , stack (abstract data type) , computer vision , generalization , materials science , mathematics , geometry , mathematical analysis , composite material , programming language
Defining fiber orientation at each voxel within a 3D biomedical image stack is potentially useful for a variety of applications, including cancer, wound healing and tissue regeneration. Current methods are typically computationally intensive or inaccurate. Herein, we present a 3D weighted orientation vector summation algorithm, which is a generalization of a previously reported 2D vector summation technique aimed at quantifying collagen fiber orientations simultaneously at each voxel of an image stack. As a result, voxel-wise fiber orientation information with 4° to 5° accuracy can be determined, and the computational time required to analyze a typical stack with the size of 512x512x100 voxels is less than 5 min. Thus, this technique enables the practical extraction of voxel-specific orientation data for characterizing structural anisotropy in 3D specimens. As examples, we use this approach to characterize the fiber organization in an excised mouse mammary gland and a 3D breast tissue model.