Abstract: An apparatus and method for imaging a portion of the body tissue comprises support for a portion of the tissue, and a force applying member that tends to deform the tissue relative to a reference position, while at the same time a pressure pattern distribution is generated indicating areas of greater pressure which are a function of the amount of deformation and localized portions of the tissue being deformed.

Abstract: An intracavity ultrasonic device for elasticity imaging of human tissue to obtain palpation information in a quantitative form by using a probe that has an ultrasonic transducer at one end thereof, the probe having a small diameter and being capable of being inserted inside a conduit of a body. An outer elastic sheath surrounds the probe and is sealed so that it can be filled with a fluid under pressure to create a chamber surrounding the ultrasonic transducer while the sheath is on the interior of the bodily conduit to be examined. By regulating the interior pressure, the sheath can be made to expand against the interior of the conduit and change the deformation of the tissue forming the conduit. The sheath includes a region of greater elasticity adjacent the transducer to facilitate localized deformation of a selected region of the bodily conduit wall.

Abstract: In a method and device for the non-invasive acoustic testing of the elastty of soft biological tissues for the diagnosing of physiological and pathological state in humans and animals, tangential oscillatory deformations of the frequency range of 0.5-30 kHz are excited on the surface of a tissue, and a velocity of the excited surface wave propagating along the vector of the initial displacement is determined. The device includes a probe with one transmitting and two receiving piezotransducers equipped with contact tips and mounted to the body of the probe by elongated shafts which serve as acoustic delay lines, and an electronic device which forms pulses to excite the transmitting transducer, processes the received acoustic signals, measures the time-of-flight of acoustic pulses from the transmitting transducer to the receiving transducers, converts it into the velocity of surface wave and displays the value of the velocity.