Study on the mechanical properties of tissue-mimicking phantom composites using ultrasound indentation

This paper demonstrates the use of ultrasound (US) indentation technique for estimating the mechanical properties of tissue- mimicking phantom composites. A tissue-mimicking phantom composite is used to simulate two-layer soft tissue in human. Investigation on the mechanical properties of the phantom composites is extremely important for the understanding of the viscoelastic behaviours of soft tissues and the validation of our proposed US indentation system. The hand-held indentation probe embedded with a US transducer and a load cell together with a US pulser/ receiver. The output of the whole indentation process can be illustrated as force-deformation curves. The mechanical properties of the phantom composites can be estimated by analyzing the force-deformation curves using genetic algorithm (GA).