Tissue biomechanics is important for maintaining cell shape and function and for determining phenotype. This report demonstrates non-destructive mechanical protocols for characterizing elastic and viscoelastic properties of human soft tissues, which can be directly applied to tissue-engineered substrates to allow a close matching of engineered materials to native tissue.
Griffin, M., Premakumar, Y., Seifalian, A., Butler, P. E., Szarko, M. Biomechanical Characterization of Human Soft Tissues Using Indentation and Tensile Testing. J. Vis. Exp. (118), e54872, doi:10.3791/54872 (2016).