Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Our current research programs consider two different micro-fluidic biomedical flows, for which refined measurements of the velocity field are required. The first flow to be studied relates to tissue engineering, i.e. an emerging field with the aim of producing 'artificial' tissue or organ substitutes that can grow within patients, ultimately providing a permanent solution to damaged tissues or organs. Tissue engineering involves seeding highly porous biodegradable tissue engineered constructs (TECs) with donor cells and/or growth factors, and then culturing them in bioreactors. The flow-induced shear stresses increase cell proliferation; however, excessively high shear stress levels can cause cell damage. Therefore, detailed knowledge of the flow field inside the porous TECs is required to be able to predict overall cell growth.The second flow to be studied concerns the generation of microspheres or micro-bubbles, which typically entails manipulating the co-flow of two or more immiscible fluids in a micro-fluidic channel to produce spheres of the desired size. This biomedical research project has application to the development of safe and effective drug delivery systems. Detailed knowledge of the velocity field both inside and outside the microsphere during its formation is required. The present grant application will support acquisition of a micro particle image velocimetry (PIV) system, which tracks seed particles within a flow to measure the local velocity field. A micro PIV system is an ideal tool for measuring the velocity field in such micro-fluidic applications. It will complement the computational models also being developed to predict the transport in these biomedical flows.