Affiliations: Biomedical Engineering Center, and | Department of Internal Medicine, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D., Biomedical
Engineering Center, The Ohio State University, 1080 Carmack Road, Columbus OH
43210, USA. Tel.: +1 614 292 4756; Fax: +1 614 292 7301; E-mail:
[email protected]
Abstract: Thin sections from human breast biopsies were employed to perform a
differential analysis of the ultrasound spectral responses from invasive ductal
carcinoma and normal tissue. A non-destructive testing methodology was
employed, yielding the reflection coefficients as function of frequency in the
clinical ultrasound range. The spectral responses were simulated both in the
context of continuum and nano-biomechanics, with the objective of quantifying
the physical properties that determine the differences in the spectral
signature of normal vs. malignant tissue. The properties that were employed for
the theoretical reconstruction of the spectra were: the density, the continuum
and the nanomechanical elastic constants, and the nanomechanical theory
internodal distance. The latter is a measure of the depth-of-penetration of
mechanical actions between contiguous tissue elements. Together with vectorial
descriptors of the tissue spatial arrangement, the internodal distance variable
affords the quantitative incorporation of tissue architectural data in the
theoretical model. In this paper, the validity of the nanomechanical approach
to tissue characterization is discussed, and its potential extensions to
biomolecular marker-based cancer diagnostics and therapeutics are
considered.
Keywords: invasive ductal carcinoma, nanomechanics, physical properties of tissue, cancer markers, tissue microstructure, ultrasound, biomechanics
