Development of Biofidelic Artificial Soft Tissues

Soft tissues form the building blocks of the human body. They include the most widely distributed skin and muscle tissues, as well as the connective and supporting tissues found in the organs. Experimental work with soft tissues has numerous biosafety and ethical issues due to which several synthetic simulants have been developed. To date, human tissue simulants have been fabricated with materials such as gels and polymers like gelatin, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and polyurethane, whose mechanical properties are widely different from those of natural tissues. In addition, pigskin and cowhides have been used extensively in experiments; they not only have different mechanical properties from most human tissues, but also carry ethical and biosafety concerns. Recently, a patented elastomeric biofidelic skin simulant and conductive soft tissue surrogates were developed, and they are the only products capable of high-fidelity tissue mimicking. They have been widely used for soft tissue mechanical characterization and computational studies. Based on this, a range of biofidelic artificial soft tissues were developed to mimic the skin, muscles, fat, brain (both grey and white matter), artery, and foot pad. This presentation will cover the development, characterization, and applications of such novel materials.