Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Science

Program

Biomedical Engineering

Supervisor

Abbas Samani

Abstract

Decellularized adipose tissue (DAT) has shown great potential for use as a regenerative scaffold in breast reconstruction following mastectomies or lumpectomies. Mechanical properties of such scaffolds are of great importance in order to mimic natural adipose tissue. This study focuses on the characterization of mechanical properties and assessment of DAT scaffolds for implantation into a human breast. DAT samples sourced from multiple adipose tissue depots within the body were tested and their elastic and hyperelastic parameters were obtained. Subsequently simulations were conducted where the calculated hyperelastic parameters were tested as a real human breast model under two different gravity loading situations (prone-to-supine, and prone-to-upright positions). DAT samples were also modelled for post-mastectomy, and post-lumpectomy reconstruction purposes. Results show that DAT shows similar deformability to that of native tissue, and varying DAT depots exhibited little intrinsic nonlinearity. Finally, contour defects were not observed for the samples under either loading conditions.

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