Photoelastic materials and methods for tissue biomechanics applications

Digital photoelasticity offers enormous potential for the validation of computational models of biomedical soft tissue applications. The challenges of creating suitable birefringent surrogate materials are outlined. The recent progress made in the development of photoelastic materials and full-field, quantitative methods for biomechanics applications is illustrated with two complementary case studies: needle insertion and shaken baby syndrome. Initial experiments are described and the future exciting possibilities of using digital photoelasticity are discussed.