On Mechanical Behavior and Characterization of Soft Tissues

The growth and advancements done in solid mechanics and metallurgy have come up with various characterization techniques that help in prediction of elastic properties of different types of materials-isotropic, anisotropic, transverse isotropic, etc. Soft tissues which refer to fibrous tissues, fat, blood vessels, muscles and other tissues that support the body were found to have some control over its mechanical properties. This mechanical behavior of soft tissues has recently shifted the attention of many researchers to develop methods to characterize and describe the mechanical response of soft tissues. The paper discusses the biomechanical nature of soft tissues and the work done to characterize their elastic properties. The paper gives a review of the behavior and characteristics of soft tissues extracted from various experimental tests employed in their characterization. Soft tissues exhibit complex behavior and various complexities are involved in their experimental testing due to their small size and fragile nature. The paper focuses on the conventionally used tensile and compression tests and the difficulties encountered in soft tissue characterization. It also describes the utility of ultrasound technique which is a non-destructive method to characterize soft tissues. Tensile and compression test used to characterize materials are destructive in nature. Ultrasound technique can provide a better way to characterize material in a non-destructive manner.