Jungsil Kim
Summary of Research
The aorta is the main artery and plays an important role in the blood circulatory system. Diseases of the aorta such as aortic aneurysm and aortic dissection cause a high mortality rate and, hence, the study of the mechanical properties of the aorta has been an active research area. In many previous studies, the aorta has been considered as a straight cylindrical tube undergoing uniform circumferential deformation and therefore uniform strain/stress distribution in the circumferential direction. However, recent biomedical imaging studies show that the aorta has circumferentially nonuniform deformation during the cardiac cycle and the aortic wall distends asymmetrically. Furthermore, it has been shown that the anterior wall displacement is larger than the posterior wall displacement. These in vivo studies have raised yet another question whether the nonuniform deformation is due to the inhomogeneous properties of the aortic wall or due to the surrounding tissues. The purpose of this study is to develop an ex vivo experiment and the strain analysis for characterizing the local strain of the aorta by using 3D reconstructed particle tracking algorithm and to investigate regional variations of the local strain in the porcine aorta during the inflation test.
Specimen Preparation
Thoracic Aortas from about 6 month old pigs weighing approximately 90 kg
(stored in a refrigerator at 5°C until used)
