Ultrasound elastography reliably identifies altered mechanical properties of burned soft tissues

Although burn injury to the skin and subcutaneous tissues is common in both civilian and military scenarios, a significant knowledge gap exists in quantifying changes in tissue properties as a result of burns. In this study, we present a noninvasive technique based on ultrasound elastography which can reliably assess altered nonlinear mechanical properties of a burned tissue. In particular, ex vivo porcine skin tissues have been exposed to four different burn conditions: (i) 200°F for 10s, (ii) 200°F for 30s, (iii) 450°F for 10s, and (iv) 450°F for 30s. A custom-developed instrument including a robotically controlled ultrasound probe and force sensors has been used to compress the tissue samples to compute two parameters (C₁₀ and C₂₀) of a reduced second-order polynomial hyperelastic material model. The results indicate that while the linear model parameter (C₁₀) does not show a statistically significant difference between the test conditions, the nonlinear model parameter (C₂₀) reliably identifies three (ii-iv) of the four cases (p<0.05) when comparing burned with unburned tissues with a classification accuracy of 60-87%. Additionally, softening of the tissue is observed because of the change in structure of the collagen fibers. The ultrasound elastography-based technique has potential for application under in vivo conditions, which is left for future work.