Fig. 8. 2-D bone histomorphometric evaluation of femoral defect healing induced by engineered hMSC condensate tubes and sheets.

a Representative histological Hematoxylin & Eosin (H&E) staining of a sagittal defect explant section (hMSC tube group; image-oriented distal-to-proximal from bottom-to-top) showing three equal-sized regions of interest in dotted squares that were used to create thresholded black-and-white image masks, with bone tissue in black and all other tissue in white. b Histomorphometric analysis of bone area fraction (n = 4 (tubes) or 3 (sheets) biologically independent samples per group; an average of three regions of interest per sample; blue circles = hMSC tubes; cyan squares = hMSC sheets). Scale bars, 1 mm and 250 μm. Individual data points are shown with mean ± SD. Analyzed by unpaired Student’s t-test (p < 0.05 or lower considered significant).