Core Facilities

The PI has established the Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory (rooms BE221 and BE223, ~2000 square ft.) on the second floor of the Bioengineering Building at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). The laboratory has facilities for joint dissection, tissue/cell culture, biomechanical and bio-transport testing, micro-CT imaging, and computer simulation.

Major Equipment
The laboratory is fully equipped for joint dissection, specimen preparation, tissue/cell culture, biomechanical testing, bio-transport testing, joint kinematics, micro-CT imaging analysis, and finite element analysis. The major pieces of equipment in the laboratory include:

Stainless steel bench top, dissecting tools, Leica stereo dissecting microscope, Leica SM2400 sledge microtome with a freezing stage.
Two laminar flow tissue culture hoods and two stacked CO2/O2/N2 3-gas tissue culture incubators.
Zeiss Axio Observer inverted fluorescent research microscope for live cell imaging.
Bose EnduraTEC ELF3200 Multiaxial Mechanical Testing System, MTS 858 Bionix Multiaxial Mechanical Testing System, MTS Synergie 100 Mechanical Testing System.
Perkin-Elmer DMA7e Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer, TA Instruments Q800 Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer, TA Instruments AR-G2 Rheometer, and custom-designed miniature tissue mechanical tester;
Faxitron LX-60 Digital Radiography System for animal imaging.
Scanco mCT 40 micro-CT scanner and image analysis software.
Sartorius analytic balance, syringe pump, Sensotec high-precision pressure transducers and indicators, Keithley 2400 digital source meter, 6221 AC/DC current source meter, and 616 digital electrometer, 16-channel data acquisition board and LabView Software.
Custom-designed permeation chamber, diffusion chamber, and electrical conductivity apparatus for biotransport studies.
Instech FO/SYS2-T500 fiber optic oxygen system to determine oxygen consumption rate of cells and tissues.
Custom-designed cell glucose/lactate/ATP metabolic chambers;
Custom-designed optoelectronic 6 degrees of freedom jaw tracking system with high speed infrared cameras (250 frames/sec).
Dell Precision T3400 and T7400 dual processor high performance workstations for finite element simulation.
COMSOL multiphysics finite element analysis software (Comsol, Burlington, MA), an interactive environment for modeling and solving multiphysics problems based on partial differential equations.
ScanIP/CAD/FE software package (Simpleware Ltd. UK) for CT/MRI image processing, solid model creation and mesh generation.
Amira software package (Visage Imaging Inc., San Diego, CA) for CT/MRI image processing, solid model creation and mesh generation.
OptiTrack optical motion capture system (NaturalPoint Inc., Corvallis, OR) for jaw tracking.
HyperWorks CAE software package (Altair, Troy, MI) for TMJ kinetics and finite element modeling.

Other:
The Clemson-MUSC Bioengineering Program at MUSC
A machine shop is fully available for students and faculty in the Clemson-MUSC Bioengineering Program.

The Department of Craniofacial Biology at MUSC
As a joint appointed faculty member of the Department of Craniofacial Biology, the PI has full access to the core laboratories of the Center for Oral Health Research located at the first floor of the same building. These facilities include tissue preparation and histological equipment for embedding, mounting and microtome sectioning, molecular biology downstream processing equipment, flow cytometry instrumentation, and jaw tracking and joint vibration analysis system.

The Department of Bioengineering at Clemson
As a primary faculty member in the Department of Bioengineering at Clemson, the PI has unlimited access to all core laboratory facilities in the Department of Bioengineering in the Rhodes Engineering Research Center and in the new translational research facility in Greenville. These facilities include biomechanical testing, joint kinematics, bio-mass transport, biomedical imaging, biomedical instrumentation, and high-performance computing.

For detailed information regarding training instrument access, or other concerns, please contact

Thomas Gallien
843-876-2409
gallient@musc.edu