Modelling of Soft Connective Tissues to Investigate Female Pelvic Floor Dysfunctions

Table 3

Biomechanical properties of pelvic structures obtained from the curve-fit of the experimented stretch-stretch curves adopted from cited literature. Polynomial equation (16) is used to derive parameters in our study.

Structure	(MPa)	(MPa)	(MPa)	References
Vesica, urethra	0.0835	-	0.092	[61]
Uterus, vagina	0.4	-	3.2	[62]
Rectum	0.73	-	1.4	[62]
Cardinal ligament, perineal body	0.834	-	6.779
Uterosacral ligament	1.6	-	8.0	[63]
Pubourethral ligament	0.68	-	5.0	[22, 63]
Collagen-rich endopelvic fascia, perineal membrane	-	0.64785	-	[47]
Elastin-rich endopelvic fascia	-	0.1619625	-
Pelvic muscle	0.0625	-	-	[22]

In our study, the coefficients for the uterosacral ligament are obtained by averaging the left and right ligaments. To our knowledge, mechanical characterization of the cardinal ligaments from human subjects has not been published. Therefore, we derived the parameters by comparing the relative differences with uterosacral ligaments in porcine specimen [64].