Development of hardness measurement method of soft biological tissue using vibrator and three-dimensional finite element method

Abstract

Palpation is widely performed in today's medical field, and it is easy to grasp the bioflexibility. However, it depends on the experience and skill of the doctor and is not objective. In this study, we propose a method to identify Young's modulus from changes in the resonance frequency of the vibrator by pushing it into the soft tissue. This is based on the assumption that it can be applied to actual living bodies. As a result of experiments on silicone with the proposed method, Young's modulus was identified with high accuracy in soft silicone. However, it was found that the identification accuracy of the hard silicone is poor and the proposed analysis method needs to be reexamined.