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Tim Bhatnagar. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Jie Liu. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Andrew Yung. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 3 UBC MRI Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Peter Cripton. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Piotr Kozlowski. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 3 UBC MRI Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Wolfram Tetzlaff. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 4 Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Thomas Oxland. 1 International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries ( ICORD) , University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 5 Department of Orthopedics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Address correspondence to: Tim Bhatnagar, PhD, International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries (ICORD) University of British Columbia, 818 West 10th Avenue, Room 5000, Vancouver, British Columbia, V5Z 1M9 Canada, E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction
The relationship between mechanical deformation of the spinal cord during spinal cord injury (SCI) and ensuing anatomical and functional damage is not well understood. Studies have shown that a greater deformation of the spinal cord results in more-severe tissue damage and neurologic deficit.1-4 Further, different mechanisms of SCI produce distinctly different patterns of tissue damage,5 indicating that the pattern of deformation that the spinal cord undergoes is important. However, there is currently no recognized quantitative relationship between mechanical deformation of tissue and response of nervous tissue during SCI.
Computational models of SCI using the finite element (FE) method have described spinal cord deformation using mechanical strain fields, effectively quantifying tissue deformation during simulated injury.6-8 However, simulated results...