Technique & Measurements

Wire myography is a technique developed by Mulvany and Halpern¹, to record tension of microvessels under isometric condition.

Each myograph module has a 5ml bath equipped with two jaws attached respectively to a transducer and to a Vernier positioner. 

Each jaw holds a piece of tungsten wire on which the vessel is mounted (parallel wires are passed through the vessel lumen). Tissue pretensioning is done by the precision Vernier positioners. The force of muscular contraction is transmitted along the other jaw, to a sensitive isometric force transducer, capable of detecting micrograms-force.

Oxygenated and nutrient-rich perfusate maintained at 37°C is provided to tissues during the experiment.

As different tissue fragments can answer differently to stimulation, depending on their size, pathological state or quantity of available fiber (for elastic tissue), it is recommended to standardize experimental settings. The normalization procedure is performed using the normalization module, in IOX2 software.