Abstract
Mouse models are used to better understand brain injury mechanisms in humans, yet there is a limited understanding of biomechanical relevance, beginning with how the murine brain deforms when the head undergoes rapid rotation from blunt impact. This problem makes it difficult to translate some aspects of diffuse axonal injury from mouse to human. To address this gap, we present the two-dimensional strain field of the mouse brain undergoing dynamic rotation in the sagittal plane. Using a high-speed camera with digital image correlation measurements of the exposed mid-sagittal brain surface, we found that pure rotations (no direct impact to the skull) of 100–200 rad/s are capable of producing complex strain fields that evolve over time with respect to rotational acceleration and deceleration. At the highest rotational velocity tested, the largest tensile strains (≥ 21% elongation) in selected regions of the mouse brain approach strain thresholds previously associated with axonal injury in prior work. These findings provide a benchmark to validate the mechanical response in biomechanical computational models predicting diffuse axonal injury, but much work remains in correlating tissue deformation patterns from computational models with underlying neuropathology.
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Abbreviations
- MPS:
-
Maximum principal strain
- \(E_{xx}\) :
-
Normal strain in the X-direction
- \(E_{yy}\) :
-
Normal strain in the Y-direction
- \(E_{xy}\) :
-
Shear strain in the XY-direction
- \({\mathbf{E}}\) :
-
Green–Lagrange strain tensor
- \({\text{E}}_{{{\text{HYD}}}}\) :
-
Hydrostatic component of Green–Lagrange strain tensor
- \({\mathbf{E}}_{{{\text{DEV}}}}\) :
-
Deviatoric Green–Lagrange strain tensor
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Acknowledgements
Authors would like to thank Salahudin Nimer, Nadeau Hahne and Howard Conner for their assistance with the experiments.
Funding
This work was supported in part by the National Health Mission Area of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the US National Institute of Neurological Disorder and Stroke (NIH Grant NS05595).
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CB contributed to conceptualization; methodology; formal analysis; investigation; visualization; and writing (original draft), LV was involved in supervision and writing (original draft), DDIII contributed to conceptualization; methodology; and writing (review and editing), VK was involved in conceptualization and writing (review and editing), and KTR contributed to supervision and writing (original draft).
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Bradfield, C., Voo, L., Drewry, D. et al. Dynamic strain fields of the mouse brain during rotation. Biomech Model Mechanobiol 23, 397–412 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-023-01781-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10237-023-01781-8