Elastic and viscoelastic properties of porcine subdermal fat using MRI and inverse FEA

There is a scarcity of investigation into the mechanical properties of subdermal fat. Recently, progress has been made in the determination of subdermal stress and strain distributions. This requires accurate constitutive modelling and consideration of the subdermal tissues. This paper reports the results of a study to estimate non-linear elastic and viscoelastic properties of porcine subdermal fat using a simple constitutive model. High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to acquire a time series of coincident images during a confined indentation experiment. Inverse finite element analysis was used to estimate the material parameters. The Neo Hookean model was used to represent the elastic behaviour (μ = 0.53 ± 0.31 kPa), while a single-element Prony series was used to model the viscoelastic response (α = 0.39 ± 0.03, τ = 700 ± 255 s).