Void volume fraction of granular scaffolds

Abstract

Void volume fraction (VVF) of granular biomaterials is a global measurement frequently used to characterize void space. There is currently no gold standard for measuring the VVF of granular scaffolds made in lab. To help the biomaterials field, we provide a library of different simulated scaffolds with known VVF for easy look-up. We use our simulated data to explore the relationship between microscope magnification and VVF, and we study the accuracy of approximating VVF using 2-D z-slice images, which is the most common approach for computing VVF of real scaffolds. Lastly, we test four different approaches for computing VVF using microscope images of real granular scaffolds and reveal that VVF may be an unreliable descriptor.