Femur window—a new approach to microcirculation of living bone in situ

Abstract

The new femur window design allows a long-term analysis of structural and functional properties of bone and its microcirculation quantitatively at a high spatial resolution. Altered functional parameters of microcirculation after surgical procedures and their time dependent return to a steady state underline the necessity of long-term observations to achieve unaltered microcirculatory parameters. Dissection of the complex interactions between bone and microcirculation enables us to evaluate physiological and pathological processes of bone and may give new insights especially in dynamic events e.g. fracture healing, bone remodeling and tumor metastasis.