Key result
In vitro techniques provide complementary spatial resolution for characterizing arterial tissue biomechanics across length scales.
Why the study?
Accurate measurement of arterial tissue material properties is important for disease characterisation and computational model development, but consensus on appropriate testing methods is lacking.
This review highlights the complementary nature of macro- to nano-scale in vitro techniques for characterizing arterial biomechanics and the need for standardized stress/strain definitions.
May guide multi-scale arterial research; leaves open standardized stress/strain protocols before wider adoption.
Accurate measurement of the material properties of arterial tissue is important for better characterisation of diseases and the development of reliable computational models. There are a number of in vitro techniques that are applied to study the biomechanical properties of arterial tissue. This review article presents data obtained using tensile testing, nanoindentation, scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Each of these techniques provides material property information at a different spatial resolution and in many ways are complementary techniques. The lack of consensus in the literature with regard to the appropriate stress and strain definitions that should be used when reporting tensile testing data is also highlighted. The potential of higher spatial resolution techniques, which provide data at micro-scale (nanoindentation and SAM) and nano-scale (AFM) for application to the characterisation of human aortic tissue are discussed. Finally, studies, which have examined age-related changed in the aorta at these different length scales, are highlighted.
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Riaz Akhtar (2014) conducted a review in Arterial stiffening. In vitro biomechanical characterisation techniques (tensile testing, nanoindentation, SAM, AFM) was evaluated. In vitro techniques including tensile testing, nanoindentation, SAM, and AFM provide complementary spatial resolution for characterizing arterial tissue biomechanical properties across length scales.
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