Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Diffusion-Associated Deformations of Biological Tissues and Polyacrylamide Gels Observed with Optical Coherence Elastography

In this work, we use the method of optical coherence elastography (OCE) to enable quantitative, spatially resolved visualization of diffusion-associated deformations in the areas of maximum concentration gradients during diffusion of hyperosmotic substances in cartilaginous tissue and polyacrylamide gels. At high concentration gradients, alternating sign, near-surface deformations in porous moisture-saturated materials are observed in the first minutes of diffusion. For cartilage, the kinetics of osmotic deformations visualized by OCE, as well as the optical transmittance variations caused by the diffusion, were comparatively analyzed for several substances that are often used as optical clearing agents, i.e., glycerol, polypropylene, PEG-400 and iohexol, for which the effective diffusion coefficients were found to be 7.4 ± 1.8, 5.0 ± 0.8, 4.4 ± 0.8 and 4.6 ± 0.9 × 10(−6) cm(2)/s, respectively. For the osmotically induced shrinkage amplitude, the influence of the organic alcohol concentration appears to be more significant than the influence of its molecular weight. The rate and amplitude of osmotically induced shrinkage and dilatation in polyacrylamide gels is found to clearly depend on the degree of their crosslinking. The obtained results show that observation of osmotic strains with the developed OCE technique can be applied for structural characterization of a wide range of porous materials, including biopolymers. In addition, it may be promising for revealing alterations in the diffusivity/permeability of biological tissues that are potentially associated with various diseases.