NSF Award
2309538
This project will use computer simulations to better understand the effects of a medical implant on the surrounding tissue. Many people benefit from implanted medical devices to restore body function caused by injury, disease, cancer, or aging. Plastics and other polymers are commonly used in hip implants, knee implants, and coatings around these devices. This could cause harm if potentially hazardous chemicals within them leach into the body. Existing computer simulations can be used to predict the amount of material released from a device for short-term exposure. However, these models cannot accurately capture long-term exposure because they do not consider changes in the tissue that occur during the healing process. This award supports fundamental research to provide knowledge needed to generate computer simulations that account for tissue changes near an implanted device. Outcomes include developing a better understanding of how these changes impact tissue permeability and may contribute to the assessment of the risk posed by medical devices. In addition, this research will further enhance our understanding of transport properties in biological tissue, support three high priority regulatory science projects, and provide undergraduates with funded research opportunities.<br/><br/>Phase field modeling is a powerful technique that can be used to model heterogeneous materials that change phase over space and time. The characteristics of an individual element are identified by field parameters that enable individual elements to evolve over time, giving a single model the ability to effectively capture complex time-dependent behavior. It was selected for this study because of its ability to model the transformation of tissue from regular preimplantation phenotypes to fibrous and avascular tissue associated with the foreign body capsule. Because the element characteristics are controlled by the field and not permanently associated with specific elements, the boundary location between different tissue phenotypes can move as healing progresses and a single-phase field model can capture both the histomorphological changes and the biotransport properties of the system through the entire duration of the healing process. This work will be the first application of phase field modeling to characterize the evolution of the complex heterogeneous tissue structure surrounding an implanted medical device. Furthermore, it will also be the first model that quantifies the release of leachable chemicals by an implant through heterogeneous tissues.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
