ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biophysics and Modeling
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1572745
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced Imaging in Plants: Exploring Development and FunctionView all 8 articles
Quantifying Hygroscopic Deformation in Lignocellulosic Tissues: A Digital Volume Correlation Tool Comparison
Provisionally accepted
Kim Ulrich1,2
Fabian Scheckenbach3*
Tak Ming Wong4,5Tom Masselter1Silja Flenner5Anaclara Visconti1,3,6Martin Nopens7Andreas Krause7Sergej Kaschuro7Jakob Benedikt Mietner3
Thomas Speck1,2Imke Greving5
Berit Zeller-Plumhoff4,8
Linnea Hesse2,3- 1Plant Biomechanics Group - University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
- 2Cluster of Excellence livMatS, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
- 3Biomimetics Group - University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- 4Institute for Metallic Biomaterials, Helmholtz Centre for Materials and Coastal Research (HZG), Geesthacht, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
- 5Institute of Materials Physics, Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Geesthacht, Germany
- 6Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Müncheberg, Germany
- 7Thünen-Institut für Holzforschung, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
- 8University of Rostock, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany
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Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) was used to study the hygroscopic shrinkage in lignocellulosic tissues. For this, small tissue segments of only a few cells were prepared from the endocarp of Hura crepitans fruits, the sclereid cell layer of Pinus jeffreyi pine cone scales, the sclerenchyma fiber sheath of peripheral vascular bundles in Marantochloa leucantha and latewood of Pinus sylvestris. The cells were imaged in a wet and dry state using nano-holography. Subsequently, a DVC analysis was conducted using Avizo™, elastix and MBS-3D-OptFlow, to visualize and quantify their hygroscopic shrinkage and to compare the accuracy of the approaches. The results reveal an anisotropic shrinkage behavior (1) along the cell length compared to radial shrinkage and (2) a greater radial than tangential shrinkage within the cell wall. The accuracy of the DVC results was validated and compared using two artificially deformed datasets (linear and sinusoidally) for controls. A (sub-)voxel accuracy for both controls could be demonstrated for each software with the image registration toolkit elastix performing best. In addition, the abundance of structural features in the cell walls leads to an improved DVC accuracy. Overall, DVC proved to be a viable approach to study the hygroscopic deformation of lignocellulosic tissue samples.
Keywords: Biomechanics, wood science, Lignocellulose, DVC, Hygroscopy, computed tomography
Received: 10 Feb 2025; Accepted: 21 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ulrich, Scheckenbach, Wong, Masselter, Flenner, Visconti, Nopens, Krause, Kaschuro, Benedikt Mietner, Speck, Greving, Zeller-Plumhoff and Hesse. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fabian Scheckenbach, Biomimetics Group - University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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