Kinematics of epithelial wound closure in the rabbit cornea

Abstract

The kinematics of wound closure in the healing rabbit corneal epithelium are modelled. The analysis is able to model the movement of the wound edge on the corneal surface. A unified formalism is described which embeds the surface velocity of the wound margin within the computational algorithm to enable calculation of the surface velocity of the wound margin from the time course of (1) planar wound area, or (2) wound diameter. The procedure can be implemented with the standard least-squares estimation procedure. A polynomial velocity function is discussed, but the model allows for any appropriate velocity function to be used to suit particular conditions of wound closure. Corneal curvature effects are incorporated to avoid the errors associated with a planar representation of wound closure on a curved corneal surface. The approach offers greater flexibility by avoiding the theoretical flaws of previous models which are often limited in scope and nonbiological in nature.