Viscoelastic model characterization of human cervical tissue by torsional waves.

Viscoelastic model characterization of human cervical tissue by torsional waves. J Mech Behav Biomed Mater. 2020 Dec 15;115:104261 Authors: Callejas A, Melchor J, Faris IH, Rus G Abstract The understanding of changes in the viscoelastic properties of cervical tissue during the gestation process is a challenging problem. In this work, we explore the importance of considering the multilayer nature (epithelial and connective layers) of human cervical tissue for characterizing the viscoelastic parameters from torsional waves. For this purpose, torsional wave propagations are simulated in three multilayer cervical tissue models (pure elastic, Kelvin-Voigt (KV) and Maxwell) using the finite difference time domain method. High-speed camera measurements have been carried out in tissue-mimicking phantoms in order to obtain the boundary conditions of the numerical simulations. Finally, a parametric modeling study through a probabilistic inverse procedure was performed to rank the most plausible rheological model and to reconstruct the viscoelastic parameters. The procedure consist in comparing the experimental signals obtained in human cervical tissues using the Torsional Wave Elastography (TWE) technique with the synthetic signals from the numerical models. It is shown that the rheological model that best describes the nature of cervical tissue is the Kelvin-Voigt model. Once the most plausible model has been selected, the stiffness and visco...
Source: Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials - Category: Materials Science Authors: Tags: J Mech Behav Biomed Mater Source Type: research