A comprehensive review on SEBS gel as a synthetic human tissue surrogate.

Abstract

Soft tissue substitutes are increasingly used to investigate human soft tissue behaviors in biomedical engineering applications, which can avoid high costs and ethical issues when employing post-mortem human subjects (PMHS). The synthetic polymer styrene-ethylene-butylene-styrene (SEBS) gel is a promising soft tissue surrogate because of its practical benefits like environmental stability, reproducibility, mechanical consistency and transparency compared to conventional polymer gels. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the synthetic polymer SEBS gel and SEBS-based composites in the field of biomedical engineering applications. A fundamental introduction of the SEBS gel and its applications in various domains such as impact biomechanics, medical products and bio-integrated electronics are firstly introduced. Section 2 details the material science and structure-property relationships of SEBS gel. Then, applications in specific biomedical fields are illustrated in Sections 3-5. Finally, conclusion and future perspectives of SEBS gel in biomedical applications are discussed. This review firstly systematically summarizes SEBS gel as biomedical material across different biomedical applications as well as provides insights into future researches.