《A NOVEL ULTRASOUND INDENTATION SYSTEM》.pdf

Ultrasound in Med. Biol., Vol. 29, No. 6, pp. 813–823, 2003 Copyright © 2003 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine Biology Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0301-5629/03/$–see front matter doi:10.1016/S0301-5629(02)00776-7 ● Original Contribution A NOVEL ULTRASOUND INDENTATION SYSTEM FOR MEASURING BIOMECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF IN VIVO SOFT TISSUE LIANGHAO HAN, J. ALISON NOBLE and MICHAEL BURCHER Medical Vision Laboratory, Department of Engineering Science, Oxford University, Oxford, UK (Received 21 September 2002; in final form 21 November 2002) Abstract—Technologies for soft tissue analysis are advancing at a rapid place. For instance, elastography, which provides soft tissue strain images, is starting to be tried in clinical practice as a tool for diagnosing cancer. Soft tissue deformation modeling and analysis is also an active area of research that has application in surgery planning and treatment. Typically, quantitative soft tissue analysis uses nominal values of soft tissue biome- chanical properties. However, in practice, soft tissue properties can vary significantly between individuals. Hence, for soft tissue methodologies to reach their full potential as patient-specific techniques, there is a need to develop ways to efficiently me