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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jun 14.
Published in final edited form as: J Biomech. 2016 Mar 16;49(9):1447–1453. doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2016.03.016

Figure 5.

Figure 5

The spatial heterogeneity of elastic modulus values in the mouse aorta increases with age and decreases with exercise. (A) Representative AFM elastic modulus maps of a 100 by 100 μm aorta sections demonstrating ‘hotspots’ of increased elastic modulus in the aged-sedentary mice and complex spatial patterns of increased elastic modulus. Histograms of bootstrap simulations of the smoothing parameter for the AFM measurements of the (B) aged-sedentary mice compared to young mice, and (C) aged-sedentary mice compared to aged-exercised mice (Linear Mixed Effects Model, log transform) indicate that the spatial heterogeneity of subendothelial matrix stiffness increases with age and decreases with exercise in aged mice. Data to the right of the red line indicate simulations where the aged-sedentary mice have more spatial heterogeneity than the compared group.