Ultrasound imaging system for measuring stiffness variation in the fingerpad skin in vivo

An elasticity imaging system was developed for measuring the stiffness variation at different depths of the human fingerpad skin in vivo. In this system, ultrasonic backscatter microscopy (UBM) with a single high frequency (28MHz) transducer was employed to obtain data on tissue heterogeneity at high axial resolution (~25 mm). The dorsal side of the finger was fixed on a manually controlled vertical stage and an acrylic indentor was applied to the fingerpad. A slit cut vertically through the indentor at the center and a piece of transparency sheet attached to the bottom allowed most of the ultrasound power to pass though while maintaining a flat surface in contact with the skin. With the assumption that the skin can be modeled as a semi-infinite layered structure, only data from a single A-line was obtained for strain analysis. The data at continuous indentation steps were cross-correlated to calculate the displacement at different spots along the depth. The de-correlation at certain regions was resolved by removing the data points with lower correlation coefficients, and curve fitting was applied to overcome the lack of resolution due to sampling. The fingerpads of 10 human subjects were tested in vivo and a gelatin phantom was made and tested for comparison. The results showed that even though some data were degraded due to the hypoechoic nature of the subcutaneous fat, the axial strain profile through the skin thickness (up to 3mm in depth) could be extracted as a measure of the stiffness variation.