Poster #052
Understanding Heart Valve Tissue Mechanical Properties Via Biaxial Testing
Mentors: Zach Molander, Ashley Taepakdee MS, Maedeh Makki MS; PI: Chung-Hao Lee Ph.D.
To progress toward building biomechanical devices, such as prosthetic or artificial heart valves, it’s vital to understand the properties of heart valves and to match their mechanical characteristics. Creating heart valve replacements without this baseline reference could lead to inefficient or poorly functioning heart valves. To obtain the mechanical properties of native heart valve tissue, we dissected porcine hearts and extracted leaflets from atrioventricular valves –tricuspid and mitral valves. With the extracted leaflets, we conducted biaxial testing and stress-strain analysis. The analysis of the results on the heart valve tissue properties demonstrated anisotropic mechanical behavior along the circumferential and radial axes, as well as heterogeneous strain distribution across the leaflet. Conducting research on the properties of the leaflets allows us to record force and displacement across the tissue, providing reference values for the mechanical properties that artificial materials should reach to be considered viable heart valve replacements.