A Structural, Kinetic Model of Soft Tissue Thermomechanics

Sub-ablative heating of collagenous soft tissues is central to thermal therapies such as thermal capsulorrhaphy, thermokeratoplasty and skin resurfacing [1]. These therapies target the heat-induced denaturation of the collagen molecule, which starts in a temperature range of 55–75 °C. There are relatively few theoretical studies describing the heat-induced alterations in soft tissues, which are mainly phenomenological [2]. In this work, a methodology for studying the kinetics of soft tissue thermomechanics is presented and used to predict the thermal response of New Zealand white patellar tendons [3]. The modeling approach accounts for the microstructure of the tissue and utilizes information at the single-molecule level to obtain the macroscopic response.