{"doi":"10.1002/mp.16599","title":"Technical note: Cartilage imaging with sub‐cellular resolution using a laboratory‐based phase‐contrast x‐ray microscope","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Microscopic imaging of cartilage is a key tool for the study and development of treatments for osteoarthritis. When cellular and sub-cellular resolution is required, histology remains the gold standard approach, albeit limited by the lack of volumetric information as well as by processing artifacts. Cartilage imaging with the sub-cellular resolution has only been demonstrated in the synchrotron environment. PURPOSE: To provide a proof-of-concept demonstration of the capability of a laboratory-based x-ray phase-contrast microscope to resolve sub-cellular features in a cartilage sample. METHODS: This work is based on a laboratory-based x-ray microscope using intensity-modulation masks. The structured nature of the beam, resulting from the mask apertures, allows the retrieval of three contrast channels, namely, transmission, refraction and dark-field, with resolution depending only on the mask aperture width. An ex vivo equine cartilage sample was imaged with the x-ray microscope and results were validated with synchrotron tomography and histology. RESULTS: Individual chondrocytes, that is, cells responsible for cartilage formation, could be detected with the laboratory-based microscope. The complementarity of the three retrieved contrast channels allowed the detection of sub-cellular features in the chondrocytes. CONCLUSIONS: We provide the first proof-of-concept of imaging cartilage tissue with sub-cellular resolution using a laboratory-based x-ray microscope.","journal":"Medical Physics","year":2023,"id":373084,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9643,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1133970,"name":"Alberto Astolfo","orcid":"0000-0001-6527-4641","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1133971,"name":"Silvia Cipiccia","orcid":"0000-0002-3485-2856","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1133972,"name":"Charlotte Maughan Jones","orcid":"0000-0002-5237-3330","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1133973,"name":"Savvas Savvidis","orcid":"0000-0001-6753-4312","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":678957,"name":"Joseph D. Ferrara","orcid":"0000-0001-8534-642X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":964186,"name":"Marco Endrizzi","orcid":"0000-0002-7810-2301","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1133974,"name":"Jayesh Dudhia","orcid":"0000-0002-2503-697X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":437450,"name":"Alessandro Olivo","orcid":"0000-0002-7150-2951","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":964185,"name":"Michela Esposito","orcid":"0000-0002-6827-1240","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":31,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:16:02.217046Z","pmid":"37431640","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}