IMAGING OF THE MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF SKIN USING HIGH RESOLUTION ULTRASOUND ELASTOGRAPHY

Purpose: The measurement of skin elasticity has the potential to play an important role in the clinical assessment of a range of skin conditions, including acne scars, wounds, skin cancer, radiation fibrosis and lymphoedema but many of these applications would require measurement of highly local values of elastic properties. Existing methods of assessing skin elasticity, such as measuring overall strain while applying suction, torsion or a uniaxial load to the skin, provide only an overall value of skin stiffness on a scale no smaller than many centimeters. Our aim was to evaluate the ability to use ultrasound t…