4J-6 In Vivo High Frequency Elastography for Mechanical Behavior of Human Skin Under Suction Stress: Elastograms and Kinetics of Shear, Axial and Lateral Strain Fields

The aim of this work was to show the potential of high-frequency elastography in depicting the mechanical behavior of human skin under suction stress in vivo. Our 20 MHz real time sonograph (DERMCUP2020trade), was combined with a circular suction device to measure, by elastography, different strain fields in the skin. The elastographic process was based on filtered SSE technique with 2D tracking. Elastograms were cumulated to reach high deformation percents with a good SNRe and to generate kinetic profiles. In-vivo experiments were conducted on the volar forearm healthy human skin. Shear, axial and lateral strain elastograms/kinetics were produced with cumulating small deformation steps. Axial, lateral and shear strain fields presented useful and complementary data to describe the mechanical behavior in different layer in the skin. The quantitative approach was to measure kinetic profiles of specific ROIs in elastograms and extract the useful information corresponding to each kind of strain