Digital Image Processing for Biocompatibility Studies of Clinical Implant Materials

The use of computer vision coupled with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to monitor the platelet adhesion and activation onto blood-contacting materials. The interaction of blood platelets with polyethylene (PE), poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET), and poly(vinylchloride) (PVC) after contact of the polymeric surfaces with whole blood was studied. The SEM images (SEM Phillips XL 30) were captured using HLImage++ computer vision systems. A library with a considerable number of acceptance or rejection of samples has been conceived and implemented. The obtained results make the developed computational vision system a promising tool for the evaluation of blood compatibility of biomaterials.