Characterizaton of the mesoscale elastic and toughness properties of soft biological tissues

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A dedicated micro-indentation system is requested to support tissue biomechanical research. The equipment allows for the characterization of various soft biological tissues including vascular tissue, musculoskeletal tissue and laryngeal tissue. In particular, the system will allow to characterize tissue at a dimension that corresponds to the agglomeration of a few cells (supra cellular scale). This scale is very important as it corresponds to the initial manifestation of organ disruption (disease). Interestingly, there has been significant efforts for the macroscale (> 1 cm) characterization of soft biological tissue and there is ongoing research for the micro scale (< 10- 100 microns) and nanoscale (< 1 micron) but very few attention had been given for the in between scale or meso scale (> 100 microns and < 1 millimeter). The requested system is specifically equipped for performing these intermediate scales tissue characterization with dedicated modules for elasticity, scratch, wear and hardness tests. The equipment will enable the characterization of atherosclerotic plaque constituents (fibrous cap, inclusions), laryngeal pathological structures (polyps, nodules, cancers), damaged cartilage tissue (collagen fibers bundles) and embryonic vascular structures. This research will serve as the basis for new diagnostic tools based exploiting these meso scale properties.