Balloon Type Elasticity Sensing of Left Ventricular Tissue for Small Experimental Animals

Abstract

This paper describes an elasticity sensing system for a left ventricular tissue of small experimental animal. We first show the basic concept of the proposed method, where a ring shaped specimen is dilated by a balloon type probe with pressure based control and the elasticity is estimated by using the stress and strain information. We introduce the dual cylinder model for approximating the strengths of material of the specimen and the balloon. Based on this model, we can derive the Young's modulus of the specimen. After showing the developed experimental system, we show basic experiments using silicone specimens. We finally show a couple of experimental results using rat and mouse, where specimens with HFPEF (Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction) can be separated from normal specimens.