New experimental method based biological soft tissue modeling

Accurate models of biological soft tissues are important to calculate the interaction forces for haptic feedback as well as simulation of deformation. However, tissue characterization that takes into account comprehensive boundary conditions of tissue experiments remains a challenge due to difficulties of testing and a lack of experimental data. In this paper, we present a novel experimental method that capturing trajectories of points on the tissue surface and interaction forces at the indenter concurrently. Experiments were carried out with a three-dimensional (3D) optical system and a force transducer. The tissue model was characterized with the inverse optimization algorithm and the force response results. From the results in our study, a model with estimated parameters from the force response might not fully regenerate the deformation; this could be an interesting extension of our work. Moreover, with this technique, we check two commonly made assumptions for soft tissue modeling; incompressibility and axisymmetry conditions.