Micro-scale probing of the Rat's oviduct detects its viscoelastic property needed for creating a biologically relevant substrate for In-Vitro- Fertilization.

Techniques used in assisted reproductive technology such as In-Vitro- Fertilization (IVF) process, often only replicate the biomechanical environment for embryo. Despite its importance, the biomechanics of the Oviduct tissue that is usually called Fallopian Tube in Human, the natural site of fertilization, has not been replicated nor sufficiently studied. This work studies the time-independent and time-dependent biomechanics of the oviduct tissue by realizing a viscoelastic model that accurately fit on the experimental indentation data collected on the mucosal epithelial lining of the oviduct tissue of rats. Nano-scale experiments with varying indentation rates ranging from 0.3 to 8 µms were conducted using atomic force microscopy (AFM) resulting in instantaneous elastic modulus ranging from 0.86 MPa to 6.46 MPa correspondingly. This result showed strong time dependency of the mechanical properties of the oviduct. An improved viscoelastic equation based on the fractional viscoelastic model was proposed. This modified relation successfully captured all the experimental data found at different rates (R2 > 0.8). Using the proposed model, the pure elasticity of the oviduct (i.e., about 317.2 kPa) and the viscoelastic parameters were found.