Young's Modulus Extraction Methods for Soft Tissue from Ultrasound Measurement System

Abstract

Young's Modulus of soft tissue is a key index to evaluate the biomechanical features of the soft tissue; it has a close relationship to the force and deformation of the soft tissue. In order to measure the force and the deformation of soft tissue, a specially designed device is used to link ultrasound and force transducers by mounting them in series. The combined transducers can simultaneously sense the compressive force and the deformation of the soft tissue. The measurement system is calibrated, before it is used, to collect the data. Based on the measured force and the measured deformation of the soft tissue, the analytics biomechanical model of the soft tissue can be obtained by data fitting. In this paper, the biomechanical model of the soft tissue is assumed to be linear and possess viscous elasticity; when the model of the soft tissue is a linear model, the derived Young's Modulus of the soft tissue is a constant; when the model of the soft tissue is a viscoelastic model, the derived Young's Modulus is a function of the deformation of the tissue. Calibration data show that the maximal error of the measurement system is less than 1.9 µm, non‐linearity error γT is ±0.06%, and the static error band γ is ±0.07%. The measurement system can be used to diagnose the pathology of soft tissue.