A METHOD AND DEVICE FOR NONINVASIVE ACOUSTIC TESTING OF ELASTICITY OF SOFT BIOLOGICAL TISSUES

摘要

The invention provides the noninvasive testing of the elasticity of soft biological tissues for the diagnosing of physiological and pathological state in human and animals, by exciting the tangential oscillatory deformations on the surface of tissue in the frequency range of 0.5 - 30 kHz and by determining the velocity of the excited surface wave propagating along the vector of the initial displacement. The device which provides the application of this method includes a probe with one transmitting and two receiving piezotransducers equipped with contact tips and mounted to the body of the probe by means of the elongated hafts which serve as acoustic delay lines, and the electronic means that forms pulses to excite the transducer, performs the processing of the received acoustic signals, measures the time-of-flight of acoustic pulses from the transmitter to the receiver, converts it into the velocity of sound and displays the value of velocity. The device also has a facility for standardizing the force by which the probe is pressed to a tissue.