Chung-Hao Lee Research in Heart Valve Biomechanics

This collection pulls together publications in heart valve biomechanics and soft tissue mechanics from Dr. Chung-Hao Lee and collaborators. Across the papers, you’ll see recurring use of biaxial mechanical testing, collagen fiber architecture measurements, constitutive modelling, and careful interpretation of cardiovascular tissue behaviour, often using CellScale BioTester workflows.

Dr. Chung-Hao Lee’s work sits at the intersection of cardiovascular biomechanics, heart valve tissue mechanics, collagen microstructure, and computational modelling. In these studies, mechanical testing is used to probe how valve leaflets, chordae tendineae, and related tissues respond under load, then relate those responses back to structure, regional variation, and modelling choices that matter for disease-relevant simulations.

This page brings those publications together in one place to show the depth of research that can be supported by CellScale mechanical testing systems and related opto-mechanical workflows.

If you want more background on the testing approach used across many of these papers, see our page on Biaxial Testing.

For a broader look at related application areas, visit Heart Valve Tissue Engineering & Mechanics and Cardiac Tissue Engineering & Mechanics.

If you want to learn more about the instrument used across many of these studies, visit the BioTester product page.

Research themes across this collection

A clear pattern runs through this body of work. Many of these publications focus on how soft cardiovascular tissues behave under multidirectional loading, how collagen fibre architecture changes with load, and how that information can be used to improve constitutive models and simulation frameworks.

Several recurring themes include:

• biaxial mechanical testing of atrioventricular valve leaflets

• regional and layer-specific heart valve biomechanics

• stress relaxation and time-dependent soft tissue behaviour

• integration of imaging with mechanical testing

• constitutive modelling of anisotropic cardiovascular tissues

• chordae tendineae mechanics and microstructure

• tissue preservation, specimen preparation, and testing methodology

That makes this page a useful hub not just for one researcher, but also for readers interested more broadly in cardiovascular biomechanics research.

Publications from Dr. Chung-Hao Lee and collaborators

2025

• Heterogeneous Peridynamic Neural Operators: Discover Biotissue Constitutive Law and Microstructure From Digital Image Correlation Measurements

2023

• An investigation of how specimen dimensions affect biaxial mechanical characterizations with CellScale BioTester and constitutive modeling of porcine tricuspid valve leaflets

2022

• Layer Microdissection of Tricuspid Valve Leaflets for Biaxial Mechanical Characterization and Microstructural Quantification

• Effects of enzyme-based removal of collagen and elastin constituents on the biaxial mechanical response of atrioventricular heart valve leaflets

2021

• A pilot study on biaxial mechanical, collagen microstructural, and morphological characterizations of a resected human intracranial aneurysm tissue

• Determination of a Strain Energy Density Function for the Tricuspid Valve Leaflets Using Constant Invariant-Based Mechanical Characterizations

• Evaluation of affine fiber kinematics in porcine tricuspid valve leaflets using polarized spatial frequency domain imaging and planar biaxial testing

• Quantification of load-dependent changes in the collagen fiber architecture for the strut chordae tendineae-leaflet insertion of porcine atrioventricular heart valves

2020

• Mechanics and microstructure of the atrioventricular heart valve chordae tendineae: A review

• Mechanics of porcine heart valves’ strut chordae tendineae investigated as a leaflet-chordae-papillary muscle entity

• A Pilot Study on Linking Tissue Mechanics with Load-Dependent Collagen Microstructures in Porcine Tricuspid Valve Leaflets

• An investigation of the effect of freezing storage on the biaxial mechanical properties of excised porcine tricuspid valve anterior leaflets

• Mechanics of the tricuspid valve: From clinical diagnosis/treatment, in-vivo and in-vitro investigations, to patient-specific biomechanical modeling

• Load-dependent collagen fiber architecture data of representative bovine tendon and mitral valve anterior leaflet tissues as quantified by an integrated opto-mechanical system

• Integration of polarized spatial frequency domain imaging (pSFDI) with a biaxial mechanical testing system for quantification of load-dependent collagen architecture in soft collagenous tissues

2019

• An investigation of the glycosaminoglycan contribution to biaxial mechanical behaviors of porcine atrioventricular heart valve leaflets

• An investigation of layer-specific tissue biomechanics of porcine atrioventricular valve anterior leaflets

• Regional biaxial mechanical data of the mitral and tricuspid valve anterior leaflets

• Biaxial mechanical characterization of atrioventricular heart valves

2018

• An investigation of regional variations in the biaxial mechanical properties and stress relaxation behaviors of porcine atrioventricular heart valve leaflets

• An investigation of the anisotropic mechanical properties and anatomical structure of porcine atrioventricular heart valves

• Biaxial mechanical data of porcine atrioventricular valve leaflets

Why this collection matters

What makes this collection useful is not only the number of publications, but the consistency of the research direction. Taken together, these studies show how biaxial mechanical testing can be used to investigate tissue anisotropy, regional mechanical variation, stress relaxation, fiber recruitment, and load-dependent collagen architecture not just for heart valve biomechanics, but in soft cardiovascular and soft tissues in general.

That has practical value for researchers developing constitutive models, studying valve disease, designing tissue-engineered replacements, or trying to connect mechanical data with imaging-based structure. The collection also shows how a mechanical testing platform can support both foundational biomechanics and more translational, clinically relevant questions.

Learn more about Dr. Lee’s research

To read more about Dr. Chung-Hao Lee’s research program, visit his faculty page: University of California, Riverside profile.