Figure 5.

Confocal images of a fresh and 21-day stress deprived rat tail tendon. Parallel registration lines have been photobleached onto the surface of the tendons. When strained to 3% (grip-to-grip strain) the registration lines on the fresh tendon remain parallel. This is in contrast to the 21-day stress deprived tendon that demonstrated an altered strain pattern due to breakdown of the extracellular matrix by collagenase which is upregulated in these tendons following stress-deprivation (Arnoczky et al. 2007).