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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Mar 3.
Published in final edited form as: J Vet Cardiol. 2012 Mar 3;14(1):211–221. doi: 10.1016/j.jvc.2012.02.006

Figure 1.

Figure 1

System for cyclic equibiaxial strain of 3D cultured cells. A) Translation stage containing 4 cylindrical cassettes (e.g. top left and bottom right) each with 4 holes concentric above circular platens (B). The cassettes sandwich a thick slab of elastomeric material, within which small partial depth wells are created (C) into which a hydrogel is cast. The hydrogel containing cells is anchored by means of a spring steel ring that flexes as the well is stretched, thus stretching the gel (D). In D the inner jagged ring symbolizes the nonstretched hydrogel and the outer jagged ring the stretched. The central schematic demonstrates the mechanism of cyclic stage translation and gel stretch. See Gould et al, Acta Biomaterialia 2012, for more details.