Fat grafting is a potentially life-saving surgical technique, often used to fill and repair severe injuries. Also used in cosmetic treatments, the procedure works to move fat from one part of the body to another. Yet not all parts of fat tissue are helpful and can be damaged or even harmful when transplanted.

To improve fat grafting, a team of students from in the Master of Biomedical Innovation and Development (MBID) program in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering used tools in IMS’s Materials Properties Characterization Facility (MPCF) to isolate and remove harmful fat tissue.

The team designed and machined a hydrostatic press in the MPCF for their research. This kind of press applies equal pressure from all directions, which is different from a hydraulic press that only pushes in one direction.

To build their hydrostatic press, they:

• Drilled a hole into a block of aluminum
• Filled that hole with liquid
• Then pushed down on the liquid with a piston

This setup allowed them to apply over 36,000 pounds of force for 10 minutes using a special machine called a servohydraulic test frame.

Their results showed that applying this pressure to their samples would destroy the parts of the fat cells that weren’t needed, while keeping the important structural parts and healing factors. This made the fat tissue more consistent and could make it safer to use in surgeries.