1(College of Artificial Intelligence, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China) 2(The Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Shanxi Bethune Hospital (Tongji Shanxi Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences), Taiyuan 030032, China) 3(Department of Orthopaedics, The Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Shanxi Key Laboratory of Bone and Soft Tissue Injury Repair, Taiyuan 030001, China)
Abstract：The health of the bone-cartilage unit is crucial for maintaining normal joint movement and function. By measuring and analyzing changes in mechanical and electrical properties of the bone-cartilage unit, it is possible to achieve early diagnosis of joint diseases, which has potential value for developing new treatment methods to promote cartilage repair. However, current research on the mechanical and electrical properties of the bone-cartilage unit is relatively limited, and the mechanisms of changes in these properties are not well understood. In this work, we investigated the mechanical properties, electrical properties, and electro-mechanical effects of defective bone-cartilage units.For the bone-cartilage unit harvested from medial tibial plateau defects of adult New Zealand rabbits (n=36, allocated into 4 groups), compression-relaxation tests were performed using a universal material testing machine,double-electrode method was used to measure the electrical impedance of bone-cartilage units with different defect radius (R), the force-electric effect was tested by Instron 3343 universal material testing machine, multichannel USB data acquisition system, DH3820N distributed stress-strain test system and computer for data collection. The results showed that as the R increased to 0.75 mm, the maximum load-bearing capacity of the bone-cartilage unit decreased to 116 N, and the relaxation time gradually rose to 14.26 s. The peak voltage of the force-electric effect at a loading rate of 6 N/s droped to 67.57 mV; the impedance gradually increased, and the absolute value of the phase angle gradually decreased. The peak voltage of the bone-cartilage unit with different R was proportional to the peak load and the loading rate. Consequently, there existed significant differences in the mechanical properties, electrical characteristics, and force-electric effects between different R bone-cartilage units.
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