POLARIZED SPATIAL FREQUENCY DOMAIN IMAGING OF HEART VALVE FIBER STRUCTURE.

Our group previously introduced Polarized Spatial Frequency Domain Imaging (PSFDI), a wide-field, reflectance imaging technique which we used to empirically map fiber direction in porcine pulmonary heart valve leaflets (PHVL) without optical clearing or physical sectioning of the sample. Presented is an extended analysis of our PSFDI results using an inverse Mueller matrix model of polarized light scattering that allows additional maps of fiber orientation distribution, along with instrumentation permitting increased imaging speed for dynamic PHVL fiber measurements. We imaged electrospun fiber phantoms with PSFDI, and then compared these measurements to SEM data collected for the same phantoms. PHVL was then imaged and compared to results of the same leaflets optically cleared and imaged with small angle light scattering (SALS). The static PHVL images showed distinct regional variance of fiber orientation distribution, matching our SALS results. We used our improved imaging speed to observe bovine tendon subjected to dynamic loading using a biaxial stretching device. Our dynamic imaging experiment showed trackable changes in the fiber microstructure of biological tissue under loading. Our new PSFDI analysis model and instrumentation allows characterization of fiber structure within heart valve tissues (as validated with SALS measurements), along with imaging of dynamic fiber remodeling. The experimental data will be used as inputs to our constitutive models of PHVL tissue to fully characterize these tissues' elastic behavior, and has immediate application in determining the mechanisms of structural and functional failure in PHVLs used as bio-prosthetic implants.