Point-type non-contact stiffness sensing of soft tissue with coupling effect

This paper discusses the point-type non-contact active sensing for evaluating the stiffness of a soft tissue with coupling effect. The sensing system imparts a point force to a tissue and measures the displacement at the point of application of force. The benefit is that such point based information enables us to estimate two stiffness parameters constructing the 3D spring network tissue model. Through the experiment for a human skin, we show that the deformation shapes between human skin surface and the model with the estimated parameters are nicely coincident.