Viscoelastic Behavior of Tissues and Implant Materials: Estimation of the Elastic Modulus and Viscous Contribution Using Optical Coherence Tomography and Vibrational Analysis

Recently, we have reported use of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and vibrational analysis to determine the resonant frequency of a material from which the moduli of decellularized dermis, pig skin, silicone rubber and chemically modified dermis were calculated. In this paper, we present data on viscoelastic mechanical properties of extracellular matrices and silicone rubber at frequencies above and below the resonant frequency. The results reported suggest that measurement of the modulus at the resonant frequency of a viscoelastic material provides a good estimate of the elastic modulus while measurements below and above the resonant frequency contain a larger viscous contribution to the viscoelastic behavior. It is concluded that at low strains the high viscous contribution to the modulus of skin may provide a mechanism for energy dissipation of impact loads while the low viscous contribution to the modulus of skin at the resonant frequency and above may promote mechanotransduction.