Morphological changes in articular cartilage due to static compression: Polarized light microscopy study

We studied the deformation of the extracellular matrices in articular cartilage using a new compression-preservation method in histology. A Hoffman clamp was used to compress the tissue, which remained throughout the paraffin procedure and was removed from the embedded tissue block just before microtoming. Then 14 cartilage-bone blocks from 2 canine humeri were compressed for various strain levels from 5% to 65%. The histological sections were studied using a polarized light microscope, which generated a pair of two-dimensional maps of the fibril orientation (angle) and fibril organization (retardance) for each section. Results were 3-fold. One there was little change in the angle and retardance profiles of the tissue for strain levels 0-15% and a significant change in these profiles for strain levels 15% and above. Two for higher compression, more fibrils became aligned parallel to the articular surface; and three at similar to 30% strain, a second "transitional zone" was formed in the deep part of the tissue. We concluded that this novel compression procedure can be used effectively to study the altered architecture of the collagen matrix in compressed cartilage.