Portable ultrasonic palpation system

Abstract

A portable ultrasound palpation device for measuring the Young's modulus and the thickness of a soft tissue layer includes a hand-holdable palpation probe having an ultrasonic transceiver connected in series with a load cell. During a test, the probe is placed on the tissue surface with a bony substratum. As the operator manually loads and unloads the probe on the tissue surface, a program embedded in a microprocessor module continuously causes the ultrasound emitter to emit ultrasound pulses into the soft tissue. The ultrasound echo signal reflected from the bony interface is received and its flight time is used by the program to calculate the original thickness and the deformation of the soft tissue. The corresponding load applied to the tissue is continuously recorded by the load cell, its driver, and amplifier module, and the data collection module. After collecting the data for a preset number of loading-unloading cycles, the program computes the Young's modulus of the soft tissue from the load-indentation response using an analytical solution of indentation on a layer.