Soft Tissue Simulants

Soft tissue simulants, essential for automotive and ballistic testing, medical, and surgical training, have traditionally relied on cadavers and animal tissues. However, their biomechanical properties change with time due to dehydration after death and the biomechanics of the animal models cannot be translated and compared with the human tissues. This book compiles various synthetic tissues used in these applications, addressing their characterization and industry-wide applications. While older simulants lack biofidelity, recent advancements in biofidelic soft tissue simulants offer promising alternatives, yet technology transfer remains limited. This book fills the gap by exploring each simulant's characteristics and current trends, facilitating their adoption in clinical and academic settings. These synthetic tissues have the potential to replace live tissues in surgical training, streamlining biosafety approvals. They also benefit academic researchers by reducing costs and time in biomechanical testing. Anticipated to be the first of its kind, this comprehensive reference book will showcase recent advancements in soft tissue simulant development, serving as a cornerstone text in tissue engineering & biomedical engineering, medical simulation, biomechanics, and related fields.

Dr. Arnab Chanda is Assistant Professor in the Centre for Biomedical Engineering, IIT Delhi, and a joint faculty at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, AIIMS, Delhi. He is also the founder of a start-up company Biofit Technologies LLC, USA. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama, USA and postdoctoral degree at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. Dr. Chanda is an expert in the fabrication and mechanical characterization of tissue mimics, and has previously developed artificial surrogates for human skin, muscles, brain, artery, and plantar fascia, and tested them at both lab and clinical settings. These experimental models have been used extensively for surgical training and have led to development of several healthcare products and startups.

Dr. Chanda is a recipient of the Early Career Faculty Research Award and Young Researcher awards from ASME and MHRD and AO Spine International-Singapore. He has 10+ US and Indian Patent applications and has authored 4 books and 100+ articles in reputed international journals. Dr. Chanda is in the list of top 2% scientists worldwide as per Scopus Elsevier 2023 database. He is also serving as the editor for a book series published by Springer Nature, editorial board member for Nature Scientific Reports, coordinator of the “Executive Programme in Healthcare Entrepreneurship and Management”, and guest editor for several international journals of repute.

Gurpreet Singh is a Ph.D. scholar in the Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India. He is a recipient of the most prestigious Ph.D. fellowship in India, the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship (PMRF), in the May 2021 cycle. His research interests are soft tissue mechanics, artificial tissues, biomimetics, and computational biomechanics. He is working on the computational modelling of diabetic foot and its ulceration progression. He is also working in developing artificial human tissue surrogates for injury and disease modelling. Previously, much of his work has been on improving the surface characteristics and bioactivity of metallic biomaterials, with research interests, including surface engineering, materials science, biomaterials, and non-conventional machining processes. He worked on the surface modification of metallic biomaterials using electro-discharge machining, where he studied the bioactivity of modified surfaces in terms of wear resistance, corrosion resistance, and other biological responses. He has authored/edited 2 books and contributed 50+ research papers and book chapters to leading international journals and conferences. He also serves as a reviewer for prominent international journals of repute.