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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Multimodal Approach to Assess Bone Regeneration and Scaffold Performance
Published on: February 13, 2026
Spectroscopic visualization of nanoscale deformation in bone: interaction of light with partially disordered
Zhengbin Xu1, Xuanhao Sun, Jingjing Liu
1Purdue University, Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA.
Abstract:
Given that bone is an intriguing nanostructured dielectric as a partially disordered complex structure, we apply an elastic light scattering-based approach to image prefailure deformation and damage of bovine cortical bone under mechanical testing. We demonstrate that our imaging method can capture nanoscale deformation in a relatively large area. The unique structure, the high anisotropic property of bone, and the system configuration further allow us to use the transfer matrix method to study possible spectroscopic manifestations of prefailure deformation. Our sensitive yet simple imaging method could potentially be used to detect nanoscale structural and mechanical alterations of hard tissue and biomaterials in a fairly large field of view.
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