Biorheological techniques are can be applied to elucidate the gelation mechanism of fish paste. Dynamic viscoelastic properties of fish myosin solution during heating-and cooling-process were successfully to explain the fundamental sol to gel transition manner of fish-paste products. Another biorheological application also will solve many key-factors on muscle-based food processing.

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Fibrous-structured cheese, called “string cheese”, has a characteristic structure that allows the cheese to be torn in one direction much like boiled crab or scallop meat. The manufacture of string cheese is similar to that of Mozzarella, except that the cheese is stretched (elongated) in hot water to form ropes and cooling down in cold water to harden.
The quality of string cheese is evaluated from the amount of stringy material that can be seen when the cheese is torn. The author refers to this quality as “stringiness”. For a string cheese, stringiness is more important than shreddability and meltability, two properties by which Mozzarella cheese is judged.
In this review, to evaluate the stringiness of string cheese, an objective method based on a digital image analysis is proposed. And the rheological properties of string cheese and their effects on the stringiness are mentioned.

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Oligomeric procyanidins (OPCs) extracted from pine bark are effective for treating cases of impaired microcirculation because of their antioxidative, antiplatelet and anti-inflammatory activities. For 10 volunteers with mild life style-related diseases, we investigated the rheological effects of OPCs on erythrocyte filterability using a nickel mesh filtration technique and on skin microcirculation using laser Doppler flowmetry. The erythrocyte filterability before the intake of OPCs was lower (64.6±14.5%, P<0.01) than that for the normal controls (85.6±0.8%) and became 69.8±7.7% 1 week after starting intake, and was significantly improved 2 weeks after intake (77.3±5.6%, p<0.02). Correspondingly, laser Doppler flowmeter signals were significantly augmented 1 week (1515±138 mV, p<0.001) and 2 weeks (1570±128 mV, p<0.001) after administration compared with before administration (1335±126 mV). Furthermore, we found a good correlation (R=0.92) between the improvement of filterability and augmentation of the microcirculation. Thus, the present study shows that the combined studies involving the nickel mesh filtration technique and laser Doppler flowmetry are relevant for evaluating the rheological functions of nutritional foods from in vitro and in vivo standpoints.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the mechanical properties of the bony and cartilaginous element of the human sacroiliac joint. Dynamic stiffness and tan δ measured using viscoelastic spectrometer, and static test was performed with an Instron-type universal testing machine. Following results were obtained: 1) Dynamic stiffness and tan δ were larger for the iliac side than for the sacral side. 2) Cartilage thickness of the joint was correlated with dynamic stiffness. 3) The values of static compressive strength was larger for the iliac side than for the sacral side. 4) The stereological pattern analysis indicated that the structure of cancellous bone at the sacroiliac joint was highly load-adapted.

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Blood rheological property (blood passage time) is an index of cardiovascular disease risks. There are several ways to measure blood reological property, but because of the complex properties of blood, each has some limitations. MC-FAN is known to be a useful filter method for monitoring the flow of blood. However, the accuracy of this method has not been thoroughly tested. The purpose of this study was to verify the test-retest repeatability of blood passage time using MC-FAN. (Methods) The blood rheological property was, in this study, defined as the passage time of a whole blood sample measured by MC-FAN. The subjects were 14 male (age; 36.1±15.3yr) and 10 female (43.1±20.4yr) volunteers. After two-consecutive measurements the test-retest correlation, and coefficient of variation (CV) were calculated. (Results) The correlation coefficient was 0.968 (P<0.05), and %CV was only 0.52%. (Conclusion) The average of the blood passage time was 50s in the healthy men and 40 s in the healthy women. Repeatability of blood rheological property (blood passage time) was high, and MC-FAN had an error of only 0.25s on the blood passage time.

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