Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory A Method for the in Situ Study of Aortic Elasticity in the Dog

摘要

An in situ method for the study of aortic elasticity in the dog employing slow-motion pictures is presented. Small beads sewn to the wall of the abdominal aorta serve as guides for a frame-by-frame study of diameter and length of the segment. The oscillo¬scope tracing of the pressure in the segment is photographed simultaneously and correlations are made between the diameter and pressure, and the diameter and length. The preliminary data obtained thus far yield a conventional hysteresis loop. A model in which the changes in length are proportional to changes in wall thickness describes the data at normal and high mean pressures but fails at low mean pressures.