Non-invasive in situ monitoring of bone scaffold activity by speckle pattern analysis

Scaffold-based bone tissue engineering aims to develop 3D scaffolds that mimic the extracellular matrix to regenerate bone defects and damages. In this paper, we provide a laser speckle analysis to characterize the highly porous scaffold. The experimental procedure includes in situ acquisition of speckle patterns of the bone scaffold at different times under preserved environmental conditions, and follow-up statistical post-processing toward examining its internal activity. The activity and overall viscoelastic properties of scaffolds are expressed via several statistical parameters, and the variations in the computed parameters are attributed to time-varying activity of the samples during their internal substructure migration.