Abstract
Mechanical properties of brain tissue can provide vital information for understanding the mechanism of traumatic brain injury (TBI). As mouse models were commonly adopted for TBI studies, a method to produce injury to the brain and characterize the injured tissue is desired. In this paper, a complete workflow of TBI induction, sample preparation, and biomechanical characterization is presented for measurement of the injured brain tissue. A controlled cortical impact device was used to induce injury to the brain. By setting the angle, speed, and position of the impact, the level of brain injuries could be controlled. Viscoelastic properties of both injured and non-injured brain tissues were measured using a ramp-hold indentation test. Regions of interests (ROIs) were tested and compared to contralateral corresponding counterparts. Methods introduced in this paper could be easily extended to produce and test a variety of other injured soft biological tissues.
Highlights
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with more than 50 million patients each year and causing 400 billion dollars of global economy loss annually (Maas et al 2017)
Understanding the biomechanical properties of the brain tissue is important to decipher the myths of TBI
The indentation test was used for measuring the viscoelastic properties of the brain tissue
Summary
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the major causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with more than 50 million patients each year and causing 400 billion dollars of global economy loss annually (Maas et al 2017). TBI is induced by a mechanical process. Many studies have shown that mechanical properties of the brain are closely related to its development and diseases (Goriely et al 2015). Biomechanical testing of the brain tissue could provide key physical parameters for the modeling and prediction of TBI (Ganpule et al 2017; Lu et al 2019; Madhukar and Ostoja-Starzewski 2019; Zhao et al 2017; Zhou et al 2019). Comparisons of mechanical properties between the healthy and injured brain tissues can provide important clues to understand the mechanism of TBI (Feng et al 2017a; Qiu et al 2020). Understanding the biomechanical properties of the brain tissue is important to decipher the myths of TBI
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