Highlights
- •The Vlastic device is used to measure the Young’s modulus of a material composed of two layers.
- •This study uses this device to obtain in vivo in situ Young’s modulus of skin and fibroglandular breast tissue in volunteers.
- •The results obtained will allow a study on a larger number of volunteers.
Abstract
Background
This paper addresses the question of the in vivo measurement of breast tissue stiffness,
which has been poorly adressed until now, except for elastography imaging which has
shown promising results but which is still difficult for clinicians to use on a day-to-day
basis. Estimating subject-specific tissue stiffness is indeed a critical area of research
due to the development of a large number of Finite Element (FE) breast models for
various medical applications.
Methods
This paper proposes to use an original aspiration device, put into contact with breast
surface, and to estimate tissue stiffness using an inverse analysis of the aspiration
experiment. The method assumes that breast tissue is composed of a bilayered structure
made of fatty and fribroglandular tissues (lower layer) superimposed with the skin
(upper layer). Young moduli of both layers are therefore estimated based on repeating
low intensity suction tests (<40 mbar) of breast tissues using cups of 7 different
diameters.
Findings
Seven volunteers were involved in this pilot study with average Young moduli of 56.3 kPa
± 16.4 and 3.04 kPa ± 1.17 respectively for the skin and the fatty and fibroglandular
tissue. The measurements were carried out in a reasonable time scale (<60 min in total)
without any discomfort perceived by the participants. These encouraging results should
be confirmed in a clinical study that will include a much larger number of volunteers
and patients.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: August 19, 2022
Accepted:
August 12,
2022
Received:
August 1,
2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
