Biomechanics at the micro scale

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology was applied to study the mechanical aspects of biological tissues at the micro scale, one for in vitro use and the other for in vivo. Microfabricated platforms have been developed to investigate the effect of mechanical stress on neurogenesis in vitro. These platforms are designed to exert mechanical tension along radial glial processes between groups of neural stem cells to study the effect of tension on cerebral cortex neurogenesis. The use of MEMS enables a high-precision application of quantifiable stresses on the sample under investigation, and thus will better enable in-depth study on the correlation of stress and neuron growth. For in vivo study, micro strain sensor arrays have been developed to enable the investigation of bones in healthy or cancerous states or in the presence of bone implants. These implantable micro strain sensors are fabricated on a flexible substrate to allow conformal attachment onto the curved bone surfaces, while providing high-resolution mechanical data in real time.