Numerical Modelling of Mechanical and Electromagnetic Stimulation in Bioreactors and Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering

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How to correctly estimate the electric field in capacitively coupled systems for tissue engineering: a comparative study

Publication . Meneses, João; Fernandes, Sofia; Alves, Nuno; Pascoal-Faria, Paula; Miranda, Pedro Cavaleiro

Capacitively Coupled (CCoupled) electric fields are used to stimulate cell cultures in Tissue Engineering. Knowing the electric field (E-Field) magnitude in the culture medium is fundamental to establish a relationship between stimulus strength and cellular effects. We analysed eight CCoupled studies and sought to corroborate the reported estimates of the E-Field in the culture medium. First, we reviewed the basic physics underlying CCoupled stimulation and delineated three approaches to estimate the E-field. Using these approaches, we found that the reported values were overestimated in five studies, four of which were based on incorrect assumptions. In all studies, insufficient information was provided to reproduce the setup exactly. Creating electrical models of the experimental setup should improve the accuracy of the E-field estimates and enhance reproducibility. For this purpose, we developed a free open-source tool, the E-field Calculator for CCoupled systems, which is available for download from an internet hosting platform.

2022Journal article

Open access

Funding agency

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Funding Award Number

2021.05145.BD