Modeling and simulation of material degradation in biodegradable wound closure devices

Biodegradable materials have been used as wound closure materials. It is important for these materials to enhance wound healing when the wound is vulnerable, and maintain wound closure until the wound is heal. This article studies the degradation process of bioresorbable magnesium micro-clips for wound closure in voice/laryngeal microsurgery. A novel computational approach is proposed to model degradation of the biodegradable micro-clips. The degradation process that considers both material and geometry of the device as well as its deployment is modeled as an energy minimization problem that is iteratively solved using active contour and incremental finite element methods. Strain energy of the micro-clip during degradation is calculated with the stretching and bending functions in the active contour formulation. The degradation rate is computed from strain energy using a transformation formulation. By relating strain energy to material degradation, the degradation rates and geometries of the micro-clip during degradation can be represented using a simulated degradation map. Computer simulation of the degradation of the micro-clip presented in the study is validated by in vivo and in vitro experiments.