Methods for diagnosing soft biological tissue pathologies

The IMPB RAS in collaboration with some Russian and foreign laboratories is involved in devising new methods for noninvasive assessment of the functional state of soft biological tissues and diagnosing their pathologies, including cancer. Considerable effort is being made to develop methods for detecting such pathologies at earliest stages. Central to the methods is the fact that mathematical characteristics of tumor tissues differ from those of normal ones. Besides normal tissues also exhibit different properties as they are in different functional states. Therefore tissues are deformed differently upon external loading. Reconstruction of the spatial distribution of the mechanical properties of soft tissues from the data on their deformed state just serves to detect cancer pathologies and to identify a particular type of pathology.

 

Mechanical properties of pathological tissues differ from those of normal ones

Prostate gland Mammary gland Results of direct measurements of Young's modulus in postoperative pathological tissues of a prostate (on the left) and a mammary (on the right) gland of a man for various types of pathology (IMPB RAS, ITEB RAS, Oncology Science Center RAMS)

DEFORMATION OF THE STUDIED OBJECT MEASUREMENT OF THE DISPLACEMENT REGION (University of Michigan Biomedical Engineering Department) RECONSTRUCTION OF THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES (IMPB RAS, Laboratory of mathematical problems of biomechanics)

 

Reconstruction of elasticity properties is a reliable way to detect new tissue growth

Traditional (B-scan) ultrasonic images of a homogeneous (on the left) and inhomogeneous (on the right) tissue-equivalent phantoms HETEROGENEITY IS NOT SEEN Reconstructed Young's modulus in the regions of interest for a homogeneous (on the left) and inhomogeneous (on the right) tissue-equivalent phantoms. HETEROGENEITY IS CLEARLY SEEN

 

Ex-vivo reconstruction of Young's modulus
for a dog kidney from ultrasonic data

NORMAL KIDNEY DISEASED KIDNEY

Data of ultrasonic experiment

Longitudinal deformation ~0.8??   Reconstructed Young's modulus

Data of nuclear-magnetic-resonance experiment
a dog kidney ex vivo

Longitudinal deformation Displacement deformation

Reconstructed Young's modulus

Immediate tasks

Mathematical apparatus and software for assessment of the displacement regions Reconstruction of mechanical properties for the three-dimensional case Reconstruction of mechanical properties for the case of finite deformations