Acoustic Wave Elastography of Arteries: Theory, Simulations, Experiments, Validation

In vivo measurement of the mechanical properties of thin-walled soft tissues (e.g., mitral valve, artery and bladder) and in situ mechanical characterization of thinwalled artificial soft biomaterials in service are of great challenge and difficult to address via commonly used testing methods. Here we investigate the properties of guided waves in immersed pre-stressed plates and tubes, and show that they can address this challenge in a nondestructive manner. To this end, we carry out (i) a theoretical analysis based on incremental wave motion in finite deformation theory (ii) finite element simulations and we validate these results with (iii) experiments on cryogel phantoms immersed in water.