Abstract
Biological fluids fulfill key functionalities such as hydrating, protecting, and nourishing cells and tissues in various organ systems. They are capable of these versatile tasks owing to their distinct structural and viscoelastic properties. Characterizing the viscoelastic properties of bio-fluids is of pivotal importance for monitoring the development of certain pathologies as well as engineering synthetic replacements. Laser Speckle Rheology (LSR) is a novel optical technology that enables mechanical evaluation of tissue. In LSR, a coherent laser beam illuminates the tissue and temporal speckle intensity fluctuations are analyzed to evaluate mechanical properties. The rate of temporal speckle fluctuations is, however, influenced by both optical and mechanical properties of tissue. Therefore, in this paper, we develop and validate an approach to estimate and compensate for the contributions of light scattering to speckle dynamics and demonstrate the capability of LSR for the accurate extraction of viscoelastic moduli in phantom samples and biological fluids of varying optical and mechanical properties.
Highlights
Biological fluids like synovial fluid, vitreous humor, cerebrospinal fluid, blood, lymph, and mucus are biopolymer solutions of water, protein macromolecules, and cells [1,2]
The abundance of evidence on the reduced viscosity of synovial fluid in the course of osteoarthritis has led to development of Viscosupplementation, a treatment approach in which diseased synovial fluid is replaced with an elastoviscous hyaluronan solution [9]
We show that for a majority of turbid media, that do not meet the limits of single scattering or diffusion approximations, dynamic light scattering (DLS) and diffusing wave spectroscopy (DWS) formalisms lead to erroneous measurements of mean square displacement (MSD), and in turn result in inaccurate moduli estimates
Summary
Biological fluids like synovial fluid, vitreous humor, cerebrospinal fluid, blood, lymph, and mucus are biopolymer solutions of water, protein macromolecules, and cells [1,2] They serve as shock-absorbers, allergen and bacteria trappers, nutrient and oxygen distributers, and lubricants in different organ systems [2,3,4,5,6]. To fulfill these roles, bio-fluids maintain distinct viscoelastic behavior, exhibiting both solid and fluid-like features under different loading conditions and size scales [3,4,5,6,7]. The significant evidence on the role of biofluid viscoelasticity in disease initiation and progression, calls for the development of novel technologies for mechanical evaluation of bio-fluids in their native state to advance our understanding of bio-fluid pathologies, improve clinical disease diagnosis and facilitate the development of treatment strategies
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