Modeling of anisotropic wound healing

Biological soft tissues exhibit non-linear complex properties, the quantification of which presents a challenge. Nevertheless, these properties, such as skin anisotropy, highly influence different processes that occur in soft tissues, for instance wound healing, and thus its correct identification and quantification is crucial to understand them. Experimental and computational works are required in order to find the most precise model to replicate the tissues' properties. In this work, we present a wound healing model focused on the proliferative stage that includes angiogenesis and wound contraction in three dimensions and which relies on the accurate representation of the mechanical behavior of the skin. Thus, an anisotropic hyperelastic model has been considered to analyze the effect of collagen fibers on the healing evolution of an ellipsoidal wound. The implemented model accounts for the contribution of the ground matrix and two mechanically equivalent families of fibers. Simulation results show the evolution of the cellular and chemical species in the wound and the wound volume evolution. Moreover, the local strain directions depend on the relative wound orientation with respect to the fibers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (Less)