PMC

Demographic result of ultrasonographic evaluation on the patellar cartilage in groups C, T, and L.

(a) The surface profile of the cartilage surface extracted from ROI (red dashed rectangle in ). (b) URI of groups C, T, and L. **Statistically significant difference at level P < 0.01.

(a) A picture of a typical patellar specimen fixed in the container. Three dashed lines present the locations of three ultrasound scanning lines in the central of the patella. (b) Schematic of the UBM system used to assess acoustic parameters and cartilage thickness.

Schematic of the experiment protocol: rats in group C under normal gravity, rats in group T suspended in cage by wrapping the tail with an angle of 30° between the rat body and the cage floor, and rats in group L suspended as rats in group T and daily treated by laser acupuncture at Zu San Li (ST-36) and Yong Quang (KI-1) acupoints.

(a) The typical UBM images of patella in groups C, T, and L. White arrowhead and black open arrowhead indicate the cartilage surface and the cartilage-bone interface, respectively. (b) One typical scan line (from the white dashed line in (a)) of ultrasound RF signal reflected from the cartilage surface (▲) and the cartilage-bone interface (∆). (c) The Hilbert envelope signal of the RF signal in (b). Two windows were set to locate the position of the cartilage surface and the cartilage-bone interface. “1” and “2” indicate window 1 and window 2, respectively.