Role of Elastin Degradation in Identification of Vascular Strain Energy Functions

The vessel wall exhibits relatively strong nonlinear properties and undergoes wide range of deformations. These characteristics make the identification of a strain energy function (SEF), the preferred method to describe the complex nonlinear elastic properties of the vascular tissue. None of the currently proposed structural models succeeded in describing accurately and simultaneously both the pressure-radius (Pr_o) and pressure-longitudinal force (P-F_z) curves. We hypothesized that the shortcomings of current models are partly due to unaccounted anisotropic properties of elastin.