Small Vessel Device
Role: Full implementation
Acknowledgements for this device goes to the Humphrey Lab at Yale and it members past and present. We used their functioning devices as models upon which to base our own.
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My main role involved parts selection, followed by full LabVIEW implementation.
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[Left] is a magnified video of the inflation of a mouse right pulmonary artery with automatic diameter tracking.
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[Above] is a picture of the setup, showing the bath, pressure inlet and outlet, as well as the load cell, bonded with paraffin wax to the distal glass cannula.
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[Below] is a magnified image of the mouse pulmonary artery. I left the camera lens in the background for scaling reference. The suture-to-suture length on the sample is under 1.5 mm.
Device Function
Like the others, the device aids in mechanical characterization of small vessels. Notable features are that it maintains the vessel in its in-situ configuration (cylindrical) and its ability to test extremely small vessels, making it ideal for mouse work.
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The key control features of this device are pressure and distance between the cannulas (axial stretch). Additionally, we measure vessel diameter and the force exerted by the cannula on the load cell. One of the reasons force measurement is important on this device is because we need to be able to estimate the in-vivo axial stretch on the vessel. It is known that the in-vivo axial stretch is constant throughout the cardiac cycle (diastole to systole). Therefore, at the correct in-vivo stretch, the force exerted by the cannula on the load cell should be near constant even when varying the pressure in the sample.
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[More to come on how this data gets analyzed]