In vivo characterization of mechanical tissue properties of internal organs using endoscopic microscopy and inverse finite element analysis.

Knowledge about mechanical tissue properties is required for functional modelling and simulating of tissue and organ responses to external mechanical stress. To get the right properties especially for functional modelling of organs, tissue properties have to be determined in vivo. There are only few described methods for characterization of internal organ's tissue mechanics that can be applied in vivo. We introduce and evaluate a method to determine mechanical tissue properties, especially those of lung tissue, endoscopically. Inverse finite element analysis (utilizing a Neo-Hookean model for hyperelastic materials) and image processing algorithms are used to determine the shear modulus of a soft tissue. The resulting values for shear moduli were normally distributed. The shear modulus of the artificial tissue sample was determined with a relative error of 0.47% compared to the value obtained by uniaxial tensile test.