What is it about?

Blood flow puts changing forces on vessel walls with each heartbeat. We developed a new light-based method to see the dynamic stress interactions between a vascular phantom and a blood analogue in real time. This approach helps researchers better understand stress transfer in blood flow, supporting cardiovascular research and medical device safety.

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Why is it important?

This is the first experimental platform to apply photoelasticity, a classic method in solid mechanics, to directly measure stress fields in fluids. By extending this technique, we can now visualize real-time stress interactions between a vascular phantom and a blood analogue, capturing both fluid and solid stresses without complex numerical models. This breakthrough enables realistic studies of cardiovascular mechanics under pulsatile flow and opens new avenues for testing medical devices in body-like conditions.

Perspectives

Developing this method has been one of the most exciting parts of our research journey. Bringing photoelasticity from solid mechanics into the world of fluid measurements was a long-standing goal, and seeing it work in real time with both a vascular phantom and a blood analogue was deeply rewarding. While this achievement is limited to visualizing birefringence fields, and there is still a long and challenging path toward fully capturing complete stress fields in pascals, we are confident that it represents an important step forward. We hope it encourages further exploration into advancing cardiovascular research and addressing other fluid–structure interaction challenges.

PhD Masakazu Muto
Nagoya Institute of Technology

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This page is a summary of: Development of solid–liquid birefringence method targeting dynamic stress interactions between vascular phantom and blood analogue, Physics of Fluids, August 2025, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0276256.
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