Pol Grasland-Mongrain edited Introduction.tex  over 8 years ago

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When a laser beam of sufficient energy is incident on a medium, the absorption of the electromagnetic radiation leads to an increase of the local temperature. Due to thermal effects, displacements occur in the medium. These displacements can then propagate as elastic waves. Elastic waves are separated in two components in a bulk: compression waves, corresponding to a curl-free propagation; and shear waves, corresponding to a divergence-free propagation \cite{aki2002quantitative}. Measures of the compression and shear waves is notably used as a method of inspection to reveal potential cracks in a solid such as a metal. In a medical context, induction of compression waves by laser has been studied with the development of photoacoustic imaging \cite{Xu_2006}, \cite{22442475}. Elastic waves used in photoacoustic imaging are typically of a few megahertz: at this frequency, in a soft tissue, shear waves are quickly attenuated, typically over a few microns, and only compression waves can propagate over a few centimeters.    In the other hand, shear waves have drawn an increasing interest in medical imaging, with the development of shear wave elastography techniques for the last two decades \cite{muthupillai1995magnetic}, \cite{sandrin2002shear}. As its names indicates, this term covers the techniques used to measure or map the elastic properties of biological soft  tissues using shear wave propagation. In this study, we study the induction of shear waves by a laser beam in a soft medium. We have been able to distinguish two different regimes depending on laser energy. We propose a physical model to describe the observed phenomenons.