Facilities
IMSB is a unique biomechanics and mechanobiology community, providing for its members and research partners the use of a number of collaborative facilities. This includes computational hardware and software resources and experimental and imaging technologies.
Across our three research themes, we have a range of outstanding specialist facilities that enable us to connect with partners in industry and other world-leading institutes.
Find out about our key facilities:
Experimental
Movement Analysis and Activity Monitoring laboratory
The aim of the laboratory is to investigate the biomechanics and motor control of human movement and various aspects of human-object interactions. The size of the laboratory and the configuration of the system allow for both and small large capture volumes (up to 6m x 4.5m).
The lab features a 10 camera motion capture system (Vicon), two force platforms (AMTI), pressure insoles (Tekscan), a wireless electromyographic system (Cometa) and an isokinetic dynamometer (Biodex).
We also have a number of wearable sensors that can be used to quantify movement in the real-world, both in supervised and unsupervised scenarios. The camera based systems and the inertial measurement units can be used to capture the movement of any object that they can be attached to, hence enabling a broad range of applications different from human movement.
For more details and access to the laboratory please contact Dr Jennifer Rowson and Prof Claire Brockett.
Biomechanics and Mechanobiology laboratory
The aim of the laboratory is to perform biomechanical and mechanobiological measurements on biological tissues and cells. The laboratory hosts a dedicated space for storage, preparation and mechanical testing of biological tissues, a large space for cell cultures and kits to study the effect of mechanical and biological stimuli on cells, a dark room for microscopy and AFM analyses and a small room for qPCR measurements.
The laboratory aims to provide a unique environment to characterize the biological tissue at different dimensional scales from the molecular up to the whole organ levels.
For more details and access to the laboratory please contact Professor Gwen Reilly.
Skelet.Al laboratory
The aim of the laboratory is to characterize skeletal tissues and other materials with imaging and histological analyses. The laboratory hosts different microscopes and two X-rays micro-computed tomography scanners for in vivo analyses on small rodents and ex vivo analyses on different materials. The laboratory offers a flexible approach to suit the user’s needs. The users can use the equipment and perform their own analysis, receive training or ask the team to perform the experiments on their behalf.
For more details and access to the laboratory please contact Dr Enrico Dall’Ara
Computational
The IMSB group has access to the Insigneo computational facilities, including dedicated nodes in the Sheffield ShARC HPC Tier 3 Facility.
Moreover, the IMSB group has a number of dedicated software for biomechanical analyses: ThermoFisher Scientific Amira, ANSYS, Dassault Systemes Abaqus, etc.
Within different projects, the group has also developed a number of web-services:
CT2S, that predicts the femoral strength from Computed Tomography images of the femur.
BoneDVC, that provides assessment of strain field in bone specimens given two images of the undeformed and deformed specimen.
MouseTibia, that provides densitometric and mechanical properties of the mouse tibia given a microCT images acquired in vivo or ex vivo.