In this research highlight, Prof. Alexey Kamenskiy from the University of Nebraska Medical Center discusses the use of biaxial mechanical testing to study the structure and mechanics of the arterial wall.
Because arterial tissue exhibits direction-dependent mechanical behavior, biaxial testing provides richer data than uniaxial methods and supports constitutive modeling across the full strain space. In this work, the CellScale BioTester is used to efficiently test human artery samples using a range of mounting configurations, including rakes, clamps, and pulley systems to accommodate different shear conditions.
CellScale software enables sequential testing protocols and image-based data processing, with results further analyzed using MATLAB to quantify deformation gradients and tissue mechanics.