The development of nonlinear viscoelastic model for the application of soft tissue identification

This paper proposes a novel nonlinear viscoelastic soft tissue model generated from ex vivo experimental results on ovine liver using a force sensitive probe. In order to study the biomechanics of soft tissue, static indentation tests were applied on ovine liver. An empirical constitutive equation was extracted from the examined data. A mechanical model combining linear viscoelasticity with a nonlinear function of strain-stress is proposed. The developed model has been evaluated both statically and dynamically with different strain rates - i.e. where the velocity of indentation is varied. By comparing simulation results and measured experimental data, it has been concluded that the proposed model is robust for modelling both static and dynamic indentation conditions. The effect of changing boundary conditions on the parameters in the proposed model has been studied by choosing test sites with different underlying tissue thicknesses. The results indicate that for small strain, the effect of the thickness condition is reasonable to be neglected.