Abstract
It is well known that bone has an enormous adaptive capacity to mechanical loadings, and to this extent, several in vivo studies on mouse tibia use established cyclic compressive loading protocols to investigate the effects of mechanical stimuli. In these experiments, the applied axial load is well controlled but the positioning of the hind-limb between the loading endcaps may dramatically affect the strain distribution induced on the tibia. In this study, the full field strain distribution induced by a typical in vivo setup on mouse tibiae was investigated through a combination of in situ compressive testing, µCT scanning and a global digital volume correlation (DVC) approach. The precision of the DVC method and the effect of repositioning on the strain distributions were evaluated. Acceptable uncertainties of the DVC approach for the analysis of loaded tibiae (411 ± 58µɛ) were found for nodal spacing of approximately 50 voxels (520 µm). When pairs of in situ preloaded and loaded images were registered, low variability of the strain distributions within the tibia were seen (range of mean differences in principal strains: 585–1800µɛ). On contrary, larger differences were seen after repositioning (range of mean differences in principal strains: 2500–5500µɛ). To conclude, these preliminary results on thee specimens showed that the DVC approach applied to the mouse tibia can be precise enough to evaluate local strain distributions under loads, and that repositioning of the hind-limb within the testing machine can induce large differences in the strain distributions that should be accounted for when modelling this system.
Highlights
There is much experimental evidence of bone adapting its mass and structure to different loading conditions following mechanotransduction
The aim of this study is to investigate the variability in the full field strain distribution induced by the same loading conditions of in vivo loading experiments of the mouse tibia
The aim of this study was to investigate the full field strain distribution within the mouse tibia induced by typical loading conditions applied during in vivo loading experiments of the mouse hind-limb, by using a combination of in situ mechanical testing, μCT scanning and a global digital volume correlation (DVC) approach
Summary
There is much experimental evidence of bone adapting its mass and structure to different loading conditions following mechanotransduction (net bone resorption occurring at low strains and net bone formation occurring at high strains or micro-damage theories [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]). Mice models are used intensively for investigating the impact of mechanical stimuli on bone remodelling in the mouse tibia [10,11,12,13,14] by studying bone response to physiological Running on treadmill) [15,16] and para-physiological [11,12,13] loading conditions In the former case it is difficult, if not impossible to control the applied load during activities. In the latter, a passive axial compression of the mouse tibia is applied through the ankle and the knee joints. Several studies assessed bone response on mouse tibia to well defined cyclic compressive loading in vivo by varying, for example, the peak loads, waveforms, frequency and number of cycles [6,12,13,17,18,19,20,21]
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