Influence of preservation temperature on the measured mechanical properties of brain tissue

Abstract

The large variability in experimentally measured mechanical properties of brain tissue is due to many factors including heterogeneity, anisotropy, age dependence and post-mortem time. Moreover, differences in test protocols also influence these measured properties. This paper shows that the temperature at which porcine brain tissue is stored or preserved prior to testing has a significant effect on the mechanical properties of brain tissue, even when tests are conducted at the same temperatures. Three groups of brain tissue were stored separately for at least 1 h at three different preservation temperatures, i.e., ice cold, room temperature (22 degrees C) and body temperature (37 degrees C), prior to them all being tested at room temperature (similar to 22 degrees C). Significant differences in the corresponding initial elastic shear modulus mu (Pa) (at various amounts of shear, 0