Novel optical system for in vitro quantification of full surface strain fields in small arteries: I. Theory and design

Recent advances in vascular biology and pathophysiology have revealed the need to understand better the genetic basis of arterial stiffness, disease progression and responses to clinical intervention. Towards this end, in vitro experiments on arteries from genetically modified mice promise to provide significantly increased insight into both health and disease. The need to test small arteries, often of complex shape, necessitates new methods for experimental arterial mechanics, however, ones that can provide information on local changes in geometry and strain. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework for a new panoramic digital image correlation-based method sufficient to collect such information and we demonstrate the utility of this approach via validation studies on phantoms having dimensions on the order of 500–1000 μm, similar to those of large mouse arteries. In particular, we show that placing the specimen within a conical mirror and imaging the specimen via a gimbal-mounted mirror using a single camera yields stereo information sufficient to quantify the size, shape and deformation along the full length and around the entire circumference of small arteries. In a companion paper, we show further that this approach can be implemented effectively while testing arteries within a physiological solution that maintains native biomechanical properties.