Development of an ultra-low-cost planar biaxial tester for soft tissue characterization

Abstract

Nowadays, the research in the arena of biomedical engineering or specifically soft tissue characterization is rapidly increasing. Due to the complex properties of soft tissues such as, anisotropy and viscoelasticity, it is difficult to predict the deformation behaviour. Hence, soft tissue characterization is essential to analyze these metrics. Soft tissue characterization, specifically, can be done by implementing a planar biaxial tester. Currently, available biaxial testers are mostly developed with respect to other mechanical components such as metals, and not for the soft tissues. Also, these devices are very costly, which makes it difficult for the low and middle income countries to perform this characterization. To solve this problem, in this work, an extremely low-cost biaxial tester was designed and developed. The design of the biaxial tester was simple and modular to allow device modifications according to the applications. The device has a force capability of less than 0.4 kN and a variable speed of 18 mm min−1 to 300 mm min−1. The biaxial tester was validated using a standard test material with mechanical testing machine and was further tested on several wound geometries including circular, square, diamond shaped, L-Plasty, and elliptical. The developed fully automated device exhibited high accuracy with real-time monitoring. Furthermore, test results on the wounds showed the device’s capability to differentiate amongst the considered wound geometries. This device can be helpful to medical students and doctors in understanding the mechanical behaviour of soft tissues during injury induced damage, disease, wounds healing and also for plethora of applications such as expansion testing of skin grafts.