The unusual stiffness or sponginess of dead and decaying biological tissue is readily apparent to the human touch. However, early detection of such mechanical property changes in a tissue’s extracellular matrix could signal the onset of disease. To measure the elasticity of tissue in living patients, needle-based indentation methods are more direct and less expensive alternatives to MRI, ultrasound, and electrical impedance. Such a probe has recently been developed by University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist Paul Hansma and his collaborators. The handheld tissue diagnostic instrument (TDI) consists of a stainless steel probe—175 µm to 1 mm in diameter depending on the tissue sample—that longitudinally oscillates at 4 Hz in a needle-thin stationary sheath. The force from the magnetically controlled oscillation of the probe produces a corresponding displacement in the tissue. The tissue’s elastic modulus, or stiffness, is proportional to the slope of the force-displacement curve, and energy dissipation in...
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1 June 2009
June 01 2009
Citation
Jermey N. A. Matthews; Probing elasticity in diseased tissue. Physics Today 1 June 2009; 62 (6): 20. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4797138
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