Constitutive modeling of the anterior cruciate ligament bundles and patellar tendon with full-field methods

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury rates are rising, and there is little consensus about what puts someone at risk for an ACL injury. Finite element models provide effective platform systemically determining the effect of possible factors on strain concentrations. However, accuracy a finite model relies material used in its construction. Standard characterization methods require assumption both deformation homogeneity, but our recent work has demonstrated that structural features like shape ligament–bone attachment (enthesis) collagen fiber splay (material direction heterogeneity) create unavoidable heterogeneity. Hence, this study, full-volume, full-field, were to build ovine bundles patellar tendon. Specifically, displacement-encoded magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was measure five full-volume fields each (n=5 specimens each) under tension, virtual method (VFM) determine parameters with these data. This accounts heterogeneity, principal heterogeneity (fiber splay), enthesis shape. While most constitutive consistent among all specimen groups, describing degree anisotropy, or alignment, showed statistically significant differences between groups. demonstrates (when properties accounted for) deterministic microstructure detectable mesoscale measures mechanical function.