Figure 5.

(A) WAXS pattern from the peripapillary region of mouse sclera. The spread of X-ray scatter intensity as a function of azimuth angle, φ, around the collagen intermolecular reflection (arrow) can be analyzed to obtain the fibril orientation distribution. The two-lobed appearance of the current pattern is indicative of locally uniaxial preferential fibril alignment at this point in the tissue. (B) Power-law background function (broken line) fitted to a radial profile (solid line) through pattern shown in (A). For each pattern, 256 individual such background functions were fitted and subtracted along 256 equally spaced radial directions, enabling the collagen signal to be isolated and extracted in two dimensions. Arrow: collagen signal peak. (C) Angular X-ray scatter intensity profile of pattern shown in (A). The scatter intensity may be separated into that arising from isotropically arranged collagen fibrils, I_i, and that arising from preferentially aligned fibrils, I_a. (D) Aligned collagen scatter displayed as a polar vector plot, whose shape reveals the collagen anisotropy. The length of vector, r(φ), is proportional to the relative number of fibrils preferentially aligned at angle φ + π/2.