Abstract: A method and device for non-invasive acoustic testing of elasticity of soft iological tissues, wherein a tangential oscillatory deformation is induced on the surface of a tissue being tested and only those oscillations, out of all resulting oscillations are measured, which occur in the direction of the induced deformation, and wherein a Young's modulus for the direction and anisotropic characteristics of the elasticity of tissue being tested are determined from a characteristic of those oscillations.

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.