Brillouin spectroscopy of medically relevant samples of bovine jugular vein and pericardium.

There is the rapid growth in application of Brillouin scattering spectroscopy to biomedical objects in order to characterize their mechanoelastic properties in this way. However, the possibilities and limitations of the method when applied to tissues have not yet been clarified. Here, applicability of Brillouin spectroscopy for testing the elastic response of medically relevant tissues of bovine jugular vein and pericardium was considered. Parameters of the Brillouin peak were studied for samples untreated, diepoxide-fixed, and preserved after treatment in alcohol solutions. It was found that diepoxide cross-linking resulted to a slight tendency to increase the Brillouin position for hydrated tissues. The variations in the position and width of the Brillouin peaks, associated with local fluctuations in water concentration, were reduced after diepoxide treatment in the case of the pericardium, but not in the case of the vein wall. To obtain more information about the elastic response of the protein scaffold without the participation of water, dried samples were also studied. Brillouin spectra of the dried pericardium and vein wall revealed a significant increase in the Brillouin peak position (elastic modulus) after conservation in alcohol. In the case of the vein wall, this effect was found for both collagen and elastin-related peaks, which were identified in the Brillouin spectrum. This result corresponds to a denser packing of fibrous proteins after preservation in alcohol solutions. The ability of Brillouin spectroscopy to independently characterize the effect of treatment on the instantaneous elastic modulus of various tissue components is also attractive for its application in the development of new materials for bioimplants. A comparison of the Brillouin longitudinal and Young's elastic moduli determined for the hydrated samples of the vein and pericardium showed that there is no clear correspondence between these material parameters. The usefulness of using both experimental methods to obtain new information about the elastic response of the material is discussed.

In-plane and out-of-plane gigahertz sound velocities of saturated and unsaturated phospholipid bilayers from cryogenic to room temperatures.

Here, we examined the gigahertz sound velocities of hydrated multibilayers of saturated (1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, DMPC) and unsaturated (1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, DOPC) phospholipids by Brillouin spectroscopy. Out-of-plane and in-plane (lateral) phonons were studied independently of each other. Similar strong temperature dependences of the sound velocities were found for phonons of both types. The sound velocities in the low-temperature limit were two-fold higher than that at physiological temperatures; a significant part of the changes in sound velocity occurs in the solid-like gel phase. The factors that may be involved in the peculiar behavior of sound velocity include changes in the chain conformational state, relaxation susceptibility, changes in the elastic modulus at infinite frequencies, and lateral packing of molecules.

Gigahertz elastic modulus and OH stretching frequency correlate with Jones-Dole's B-coefficient in aqueous solutions of the Hofmeister series.

The ability of salts to change the macroscopic viscosity of their aqueous solutions is described by the Jones-Dole equation with B-coefficient for the linear concentration term. The sign and value of this coefficient are often considered as a measure of the salt's structure-making/breaking ability, while the validity of this assignment is still under discussion. Here, by applying Raman and Brillouin scattering spectroscopy to various salts from the Hofmeister series, we studied a possible relation between macroscopic Jones-Dole's B-coefficient and the microscopic dynamic response. Raman spectroscopy provides information about molecular vibrations and Brillouin spectroscopy about acoustic phonons with wavelengths of hundreds of nanometers. It has been found that Jones-Dole's B-coefficient correlates linearly with the coefficients, describing the concentration dependences of the average OH stretching frequency, real and imaginary parts of gigahertz elastic modulus. These relationships have been interpreted to mean that the OH stretching frequency is a measure of the ion-induced changes in the water network that cause changes in both viscosity and gigahertz relaxation. Depolarized inelastic light scattering revealed that the addition of structure-making ions not only changes the frequency of the relaxation peak but also increases the low-frequency part of the relaxation susceptibility. It was shown that the ion-induced increase in the gigahertz elastic modulus can be described by changes in the relaxational susceptibility without a noticeable change in the instantaneous elastic modulus. The isotropic Raman contribution associated with the tetrahedral-like environment of H2O molecule does not correlate with Jones-Dole's B-coefficient, suggesting a minor influence of these tetrahedral-like configurations on viscosity.