Simulation of tissue differentiation in a mechanically loaded bone regeneration chamber

Abstract

Tissue differentiation can be regulated by mechanical loading. A bone chamber experiment has been conducted in order to investigate the effect of loading on tissue differentiation in vivo. In this study a computational model of the experiment was developed in which a mechano-regulation algorithm for stem cell differentiation in response to mechanical stimulus was combined with algorithms for cell migration, proliferation and apoptosis. The results show that the simulation is feasible to forecast the tissue differentiation process inside a bone chamber. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.