Low-cost microcontroller platform for studying lymphatic biomechanics in vitro.

ABSTRACT: The pumping innate to collecting lymphatic vessels routinely exposes the endothelium to oscillatory wall shear stress and other dynamic forces. However, studying the mechanical sensitivity of the lymphatic endothelium remains a difficult task due to limitations of commercial or custom systems to apply a variety of time-varying stresses in vitro. Current biomechanical in vitro testing devices are very expensive, limited in capability, or highly complex; rendering them largely inaccessible to the endothelial cell biology community. To address these shortcomings, the authors propose a reliable, low-cost platform for augmenting the capabilities of commercially available pumps to produce a wide variety of flow rate waveforms. In particular, the Arduino Uno, a microcontroller development board,

SUBMITTER: Kornuta JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3831339 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature