Quantitative structural assay of a nerve graft

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10783349-B2
Application number	US-201916398592-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 30, 2019
Priority date	May 28, 2015
Publication date	Sep 22, 2020
Grant date	Sep 22, 2020

Abstract

Techniques are described for determining the quality of a nerve graft by assessing quantitative structural characteristics of the nerve graft. Aspects of the techniques include obtaining an image identifying laminin-containing tissue in the nerve graft; creating a transformed image using a transformation function of an image processing application on the image; using an analysis function of the image processing application, analyzing the transformed image to identify one or more structures in accordance with one or more recognition criteria; and determining one or more structural characteristics of the nerve graft derived from a measurement of the one or more structures.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for assessing the quality of a nerve graft, the method comprising:
obtaining an image identifying laminin-containing tissue in the nerve graft;
creating a transformed image using a transformation function of an image processing application on the image;
using an analysis function of the image processing application, analyzing the transformed image to identify one or more structures in accordance with one or more recognition criteria;
determining one or more structural characteristics of the nerve graft derived from a measurement of the one or more structures, wherein the one or more structural characteristics comprise a percent of endoneurial tube lumen per area; and
assessing the quality of the nerve graft based upon, at least in part, the determined one or more structural characteristics of the nerve graft.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein, before creating the transformed image, the method further comprises selecting one or more of an area of interest and a sampling window to delineate a selected image area, wherein the analyzing of the transformed image is performed only on the selected image area.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the area of interest comprises a nerve fascicle.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein creating the transformed image comprises applying thresholding to the image.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein applying the thresholding comprises applying one or more of a threshold method, threshold color, a color space, and a dark background.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more recognition criteria comprises a size range of the one or more structures.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more recognition criteria comprise a circularity range of the one or more structures.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the one or more structural characteristics further comprise the number of endoneurial tubes per area.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
comparing the one or more structural characteristics to a qualitative assessment score.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
comparing the one or more structural characteristics to one or more reference ranges indicating an acceptable structural characteristic of the nerve graft.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
comparing the one or more structural characteristics to a bioassay result of the nerve graft.

Assignees

• Axogen Corp

Inventors

• Deister Curt

Classifications

• G06V20/698 Primary

  Matching; Classification · CPC title

• G06V20/695 Primary

  Preprocessing, e.g. image segmentation · CPC title

• G06T2207/30024

  Cell structures in vitro; Tissue sections in vitro · CPC title

• G06T2207/10056

  Microscopic image · CPC title

• G06T7/62 Primary

  of area, perimeter, diameter or volume · CPC title