Journal of biomechanics
-
Journal of biomechanics · Jan 2016
Mechanical testing and non-linear viscoelastic modelling of the human placenta in normal and growth restricted pregnancies.
Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR) is a disease where the placenta is unable to transfer enough nutrients to the fetus, limiting its growth, and resulting in high mortality and life-long morbidities. Current detection rates of IUGR are poor, resulting in limited disease management. Elastography is a promising non-invasive tool for the detection of IUGR, and works by detecting changes in the mechanical properties of the placenta. To date, however, it is not known whether IUGR placentas have different mechanical properties from normal ones, and thus investigating this is the first focus of the current study. The second focus is to evaluate and model the viscoelastic properties of the normal and IUGR placenta, so that it may be possible to improve elastography in the future by incorporating viscoelasticity. ⋯ Our results demonstrate that IUGR placentae have different mechanical properties from normal placentae, and a five parameter bi-exponential NVS model can effectively describe the mechanical properties of the placenta in health and disease.