A New Mesostructural Soft Tissue Testing System With Multiaxial Loading and Local Strain Measurement Capabilities

A new mesostructural testing system (MSTS) has been developed to measure structural and material properties of soft tissues at an intermediate, or “mesostructural” scale (i.e. ~ .01 to 10 mm). Key features of this new system are biaxial computer controlled loading and synchronized high-resolution microscopic digital imaging. The system uses a marker-less feature tracking algorithm to measure local deformation of mesostructures such as the fiber bundles of the aortic valve. Validation and bioengineering applications are described.