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- Volume 10 (1991)
- Number 1 - Stermat '90 (part I) - June 1991
- Quantification of drug-stimulated collagen fibrillogenesis with a granulometry algorithm based on mathematical morphology
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Quantification of drug-stimulated collagen fibrillogenesis with a granulometry algorithm based on mathematical morphology
Abstract
Individual tropocollagen molecules of acid soluble type I collagen present a spontaneous tendency to self-aggregation. Many molecules aggregate in an ordered way to form fibrils and fibers. In “in vitro" conditions this fibrillogenesis takes place rather slowly and only to a limited extent. It was demonstrated in this work that some flavonoids and bioflavonoids are able to accelerate considerably the collagen fibril formation and in presence of some of the substances tested the size of the formed fibers is much greater than that of the fibers formed by spontaneous self-aggregation.
In such a work the exact determination of the size and the shape of the aggregates is of utmost importance. This evaluation was done with a granulometry algorithm based on mathematical morphology. The size of the particles is obtained by successive openings on a binary image obtained on thresholding or with the top-hat transformation of a digitized image. The total original surface of the particles and the remaining ones after each opening are given as well as the individual surface of each particle after labeling. The results given in this paper and some others which will be published separately, demonstrated the power of this granulometry algorithm and its usefulness for biomedical applications.