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

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In this study, we show that shear waves can be induced in soft tissues by a laser beam, with a model of the underlying physical phenomenon. We also applied the technique in a biological tissue to evaluate its potential application in shear wave elastography.  In the first experiment, illustrated by Figure \ref{Figure1}, we used a laser beam emitted by a Nd:YAG laser (EverGreen 200, Quantel, Les Ulis, France), which produced a Q-switched pulse of energy $E$ = 200 mJ at a central wavelength of 532 nm during 10 ns in a beam of section $S$=20 mm$^2$. The laser beam was absorbed in a 4x8x8 cm$^3$ tissue-mimicking phantom made of water and of 5\% polyvinyl alcohol, 1 \% black graphite powder and 1\% salt. A freezing/thawing cycle was applied to stiffen the material to a value of 15$\pm$5 kPa \cite{17375819}.  The laser was absorbed in the medium with an exponential decay of the optical intensity $I$ along medium depth $z$\cite{scruby1990laser}: $r$\cite{scruby1990laser}:  \begin{equation}  I=(1-R)I_0 I=I_0  \exp(- \gamma z) r)  \label{eq:opticalIntensity}  \end{equation}  where$R$ is the reflection coefficient of the medium (neglected thereafter for a black mat medium such as the one used here),  $I_0=\frac{1}{S}\frac{d E}{dt}$ the incident intensity distribution at the surface (by neglecting the reflection on the black mat medium)  and $\gamma$ the absorption coefficient of the medium. !!!We measured the fraction of light which go through different thicknesses of the medium with a laser beam power measurement device (): it indicated that $\gamma \approx$ ??? m$^{-1}$ in our sample,!!! meaning that most of the radiation is absorbed in the first hundred of micrometers.  %Even if the sample is mainlyeFor low concentration medium, $\gamma$ is hard to calculate in our case, as the sample is composed of different materials, but the graphite, even in low concentration, absorbate much more than other components, so we can approximate $\gamma \approx \gamma_{graphite}$. For graphite particles of 1.85 $\mu$m at a concentration of 10 g.L$^{-1}$, the order of magnitude of $\gamma$ is 10$^4$ m$^{-1}$, meaning that most of the radiation is absorbed in the first hundred of micrometers of sample.