Mechanical response of polyacrylamide breast tissue phantoms: Formulation, characterization and modeling

In the context of breast cancer detection, mechanical imaging is an emerging technique for screening breast cancer. In view of its promise, it deserves a detailed investigation. Development of material that can emulate tissue behavior is essential for research. This work is concerned with the fabrication of polymeric specimens to capture the mechanical behavior of human breast tissues. Three types of tissue phantoms are fabricated: fat, glandular and ductal carcinoma tissues. The fabricated phantoms are compared to available human breast tissue data obtained through compression tests and stress relaxation tests. Further, the fabricated tissue phantoms are subjected to stress relaxation tests to characterize their viscoelastic response. A finite strain viscoelastic constitute model is proposed to describe the mechanical response of the breast tissue phantoms. The model is calibrated using experimental data for phantom tissue specimens. Both phantom tissue specimens and model predictions show reasonable trends. The phantom tissues and model may be of utility in developing mechanical imaging setups.