Mechanical characterization of human brain tumors from patients and comparison to potential surgical phantoms
Fig 6
Agarose hydrogels and ballistic gel are stiffer than normal brain tissue.
Mean (red bar) of pooled indentations are shown along with resulting steady-state modulus from each indentation performed. Despite being used frequently as mechanical surrogates for healthy brain tissue, low concentration agarose samples and a ballistic gel were stiffer than tested normal mouse brain samples. Store-bought Knox® Gelatin samples were also stiffer than normal brain tissue yet similar to the agarose hydrogels tested. Grey box reflects values for normal brain modulus reported in the literature using unconfined compression [40] and indentation methods [41,42].