Determination of the elastic properties of rabbit vocal fold tissue using uniaxial tensile testing and a tailored finite element model

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to quantify the effects of the specimen shape on the accuracy of mechanical properties determined from a shape-specific model generation strategy. Digital images of five rabbit vocal folds (VFs) in their initial undeformed conditions were used to build corresponding specific solid models. The displacement field of the VFs under uniaxial tensile test was then measured over the visible portion of the surface using digital image correlation. A three-dimensional finite element model was built, using ABAQUS, for each solid model, while imposing measured boundary conditions. An inverse-problem method was used, assuming a homogeneous isotropic linear elastic constitutive model. Unknown elastic properties were identified iteratively through an error minimization technique between simulated and measured force-time data. The longitudinal elastic moduli of the five rabbit VFs were calculated and compared to values from a simple analytical method and those obtained by approximating the cross-section as elliptical. The use of shape-specific models significantly reduced the standard deviation of the Young's modulus of the tested specimens. However, a non-parametric statistical analysis test, i.e., the Friedman test, yielded no statistically significant differences between the shape-specific method and the elliptic cylindrical finite element model. Considering the required procedures to reconstruct the shape-specific finite element model for each tissue specimen, it might be expedient to use the simpler method when large numbers of tissue specimens are to be compared regarding their Young's moduli.

Investigation of Chitosan-glycol/glyoxal as an Injectable Biomaterial for Vocal Fold Tissue Engineering

“…Therefore, the amount of the mechanical stress experienced by the cells can be effectively modulated by the viscoelastic properties of the injectable biomaterial [25]. The shear viscoelastic properties of the CS hydrogels (table 1) were in the range of those of human [26] and pig [27] VFLP and below those of rabbit [28] and rat [29] VFLP tissues. In particular, the storage shear moduli of human VFLP were between 10-250 Pa and 10-100 Pa for male and female subjects, respectively.…”

Subject-Specific Computational Modeling of Evoked Rabbit Phonation

“…Latifi et al [23] later did uniaxial tensile testing of rabbit vocal fold tissues in the longitudinal direction and determined that Young's modulus is up to 170 kPa, a result that needs to be further confirmed according to them. In the current study, the vocal fold is assumed to be isotropic; thus, the stiffness becomes higher when matching the frequency with that of the anisotropic tissue, which has greater stiffness in the longitudinal direction.…”

Characterisation of Skin Biomechanical Properties via Experiment-Numerical Integration

“…In contrast, Luboz et al [21] analysed the human soft tissue fat, muscle and buttock skin as samples for the study of ischial pressure ulcers that was a major public health in France. Not only that kind of soft tissues, but rabbit vocal fold [22], pig thoracics elastin [7], pig collagens [8] and many more animal soft tissues were utilised as specimens in numbers of research. Clearly, the soft tissues include skin for human or animal shows a complex behaviour as highlynon linear, anisotropic and inhomogeous [23][24].…”