title: Assessing corneal biomechanics with Brillouin spectro-microscopy.
abstract: A new Brillouin spectro-microscope was designed and built to investigate the mechanical properties of bovine and human corneas. This instrument integrates a single-stage virtually imaged phased array spectrometer with a novel adaptive-optics interferometric filter to achieve unprecedented rejection of the elastic background signal. As a result, highly-resolved, reproducible data from both thin and thick collagen-based materials were obtained. In particular, this technique is capable of rigorously measuring the relative stiffness of different areas of human corneas, thus providing a true non-contact method to characterise the fundamental mechanical features of both live and fixed biological tissue samples.
authors.affiliation: Imperial College London, Blackett Laboratory, London, SW7 2BW, UK. guillaume.lepert07@imperial.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lepert
authors.affiliation: Institute of Genetic Medicine, Newcastle University, International Centre for Life, Central Parkway, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 3BZ, UK.
authors.forename: Ricardo M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Gouveia
authors.affiliation: Institute of Genetic Medicine, Newcastle University, International Centre for Life, Central Parkway, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 3BZ, UK.
authors.forename: Che J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Connon
authors.affiliation: Imperial College London, Blackett Laboratory, London, SW7 2BW, UK. guillaume.lepert07@imperial.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Carl
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Paterson
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D003315:Cornea / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007368:Interferometry / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D008853:Microscopy / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D008875:Middle Aged; D016707:Tissue Fixation