Shear modulus of porcine coronary artery: contributions of media and adventitia

The epicardial coronary arteries experience significant torsion in the axial direction due to changes in the shape of the heart during the cardiac cycle. The objective of this study was to determine the torsional mechanical properties of the coronary arteries under various circumferential and longitudinal loadings. The coronary artery was treated as a two-layer composite vessel consisting of intima-medial and adventitial layers, and the shear modulus of each layer was determined. Eight porcine hearts were obtained at a local abattoir, and their right coronary and left anterior descending arteries were isolated and tested in vitro with a triaxial torsion machine (inflation, longitudinal stretch, and circumferential twist). After the intact vessel was tested, the adventitia was dissected away, leaving an intact media that was then tested under identical triaxial loading conditions. We proposed a biomechanical analysis to compute the shear modulus of the adventitia from the measured shear moduli of the intact vessel and the media. To validate our predictions, we used four additional hearts in which the shear modulus of the adventitia was measured after dissection of media. Our results show that the shear modulus does not depend on the shear stress or strain but varies linearly with circumferential and longitudinal stresses and in a nonlinear way with the corresponding strains. Furthermore, we found that the shear modulus of the adventitia is larger than that of the intact vessel, which is larger than the vessel media. These results may have important implications for baroreceptor sensitivity, circulation of the vasa vasorum, and coronary dissection.