12/6 – Kai-tak Wan, Northeastern University
Biomedical Engineering Seminar
December 6, 2024
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location
BME Seminar in SEO 236
Address
851 S Morgan St, Chicago, IL 60607
Calendar
Download iCal FileSpeaker:
Kai-tak Wan, Ph.D.
Professor
Northeastern University, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Title: Mechanics of Palpation – Mechano-sensing to Detect Malignant Tumors in Soft Tissues
Abstract: Palpation is a form of mechano-sensing with fingertips as sensors pressing against a soft tissue (e.g. breast tissue on thorax ribcage in a supine position), followed by lateral plowing over the surface. It is a primitive but cheap, safe, convenient, and by-and-large painless way to detect solid inclusions such as breast cancers, shrapnel, and bone debris, and is always the frontline clinical examination performed before X-ray or MRI. Despite its ubiquity, a proper solid-mechanics model allowing large elastic deformation is unavailable in the literature. In fact, palpation always leads to motion of hard inclusion and even mechanical instability that is unique in hyperelastic tissues and gels in general. A preliminary computational model is recently built to explore the underlying mechanics and shows consistency with preliminary measurements. The new instability phenomenon opens new directions for hyperelasticity and new ways to design and implement mechano-sensors. If time allows, I will discuss some of our latest findings in dynamics and resonance of levitated non-Newtonian liquid droplets.
Date posted
Nov 19, 2024
Date updated
Nov 19, 2024