Optical measurements of local strains allows for microscale adhesion analysis at cartilage repair interface

Deformations of an in vitro cartilage repair model under shear loading. BioCartilage, a particulate cartilage allograft, was packed into a cylindrical cartilage defect and capped with a fibrin sealant. The repair interface is shown with fluorescent staining with the BioCartilage+Sealant repair on the left and the native, healthy tissue on the right. At the interface, we identified two failure modes where (1) the repair is pulled apart from the healthy tissue and (2) the repair slides next to the healthy tissue. Through digital image correlation, displacements were tracked and microscale strains were calculated to quantify the magnitude of these two failure methods.

BioCartilage repair capped with pooled plasma thrombin + PPP fibrinogen