Identification of material viscoelastic properties using the motion of a rigid sphere located at tissue-mimicking material interface in response to a dynamic force

Abstract

The motion of a rigid sphere located at tissue-mimicking material interface in response to a dynamic force of short duration for the purpose of the determination of material viscoelastic properties was investigated in this study. The experiments were performed using a rigid sphere located at tissue-like material (gelatin phantom) interfaces. An electromagnet was used to apply the desired dynamic force to the sphere and a high-speed camera was used to track the movement of the sphere. Using the experimentally measured response of the sphere and the dynamic response of the sphere predicted by a sophisticated analytical model of the sphere located at a medium interface, the shear modulus, density and damping of the tissue-mimicking material were determined. The procedure followed in this study successfully produced the shear modulus, density and viscous damping ratio of the 20% (and 30%) gelation phantom as 1320 Pa, 1040 kg/m3 and 0.12 (and 2580 Pa, 1180 kg/m3 and 0.2), respectively. As the sophisticated theoretical model that is valid for small and large sphere displacements includes many parameters for the system such as the mass and size of the sphere, the inertia force of the medium involved in motion and the radiation damping due to shear waves and the experimental setup is very straightforward, it is believed that the procedure proposed in this study can be widely exploited to identify accurate material viscoelastic properties in practice.