Numerical Analysis of Elasticity Measurement of Soft Tissues via a 2D Distributed-Deflection Sensor: Significance of Tissue Parameters

This paper reports on a numerical study on how the elasticity of soft tissue measured by a Compression-Relaxation (C-R) testing method via a two-dimensional (2D) distributed-deflection sensor varies with the tissue parameters (i.e., elasticity, thickness and in-plane dimension). The 2D sensor entails a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micro structure embedded with a 3×3 sensing-plate/transducer array deposited on a Pyrex substrate. By moving the 2D sensor against a soft tissue region with a pre-defined compression pattern, the average deflection-depth slope of the deflections of the sensing-plate array versus the compression depth of the testing tissue is measured, and is translated to the measured tissue elasticity via a 1D theoretical model. Since the measured tissue elasticity arises from the tissue-sensor interaction, a numerical model, which includes the 2D sensor and a soft tissue underneath, is created in COMSOL to investigate the sensitivity of the measured tissue elasticity to tissue parameters including tissue thickness, in-plane dimension and elasticity. The numerical results reveal that the theoretical model causes a 20% overestimate on the inherent tissue elasticity in the range of 25kPa∼200kPa. The measured tissue elasticity does not vary with tissue thickness when tissue thickness is above 6mm. However, a relatively thin tissue leads to higher measured tissue elasticity. As long as the tissue in-plane dimension is larger than the sensor in-plane dimension, the measured tissue elasticity is insensitive to the tissue in-plane dimension.