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Evaluating elastic properties of heterogeneous soft tissue by surface acoustic waves detected by phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography

This paper reports an improvement in the quality of elasticity measurements by using phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PhS-OCT) to detect surface acoustic waves (SAWs) on soft tissue, with resolution of a few micrometers. The paper proves that this technique is sensitive enough to detect mechanical properties locally along both axial and lateral directions within tissue. With PhS-OCT used as a sensor, the SAW is highly sensitive to the local elasticity change of a specimen with a sensing depth of ~5mm, thus promising clinical applications where the quantitative elasticity of localised skin diseases is needed to aid diagnosis and treatment.