Fig. 1.

Tissue sample preparation and force measurement methods.

A: Tissue flap excision method; B: dissection of areolar connective tissue sublayer following the natural cleavage plane of the tissue yielding a single tissue sheet; C: clip configuration; D: tissue sample testing method. E: Determination of resting tissue tension as the equilibrium tissue force at 50 minutes (3000 sec.); F: Curve fitting derived from normalized force data using the five-parameter Maxwell model described in the methods. Time constants in this specimen are t₁ = 28.2 s and t₂ = 958 s; goodness of fit of the model (R² = 0.99).