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Conformal piezoelectric systems for clinical and experimental characterization of soft tissue biomechanics

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 728–736 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mechanical assessment of soft biological tissues and organs has broad relevance in clinical diagnosis and treatment of disease. Existing characterization methods are invasive, lack microscale spatial resolution, and are tailored only for specific regions of the body under quasi-static conditions. Here, we develop conformal and piezoelectric devices that enable in vivo measurements of soft tissue viscoelasticity in the near-surface regions of the epidermis. These systems achieve conformal contact with the underlying complex topography and texture of the targeted skin, as well as other organ surfaces, under both quasi-static and dynamic conditions. Experimental and theoretical characterization of the responses of piezoelectric actuator–sensor pairs laminated on a variety of soft biological tissues and organ systems in animal models provide information on the operation of the devices. Studies on human subjects establish the clinical significance of these devices for rapid and non-invasive characterization of skin mechanical properties.

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Figure 1: Thin, compliant modulus sensor (CMS) based on nanoribbons of PZT in arrays of mechanical actuators and sensors.
Figure 2: Experimental and theoretical analysis of the device operation.
Figure 3: Modulus measurements on ex vivo female and male skin samples as a function of time before and after application of a moisturizing lotion.
Figure 4: CMS mapping of pathologies located on various body regions.
Figure 5: Spatial mapping with a rotatable CMS system and in vivo evaluations on a cancer patient (basal cell carcinoma).
Figure 6: Ex vivo CMS measurements on bovine organs.

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Acknowledgements

Research supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award # DE-FG02-07ER46471, through the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. C.D. thanks Cavit Dagdeviren and YongAn Huang for their useful suggestions in device design, and V. Merkle for her assistance during DMA tests of ex vivo organ tissues. M.M. acknowledge support from the European Union (ERDF) and the Free State of Saxony via the ESF project 100098212 InnoMedTec. M.M. thanks G. Cuniberti from TU Dresden for fruitful discussions and for supporting an internship by J.A.R.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Canan Dagdeviren

    Present address: Present address: The David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Canan Dagdeviren, Pauline Joe, Karan Usgaonkar, R. Chad Webb & John A. Rogers

  2. Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Canan Dagdeviren, Pauline Joe, Karan Usgaonkar, R. Chad Webb & John A. Rogers

  3. State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China

    Yan Shi

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Yan Shi, Yewang Su & Yonggang Huang

  5. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Center for Engineering and Health and Skin Disease Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA

    Yan Shi, Yewang Su & Yonggang Huang

  6. MC10 Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140, USA

    Roozbeh Ghaffari

  7. Department of Research and Innovation, L’Oreal R&I Incubator, Clark, New Jersey 07066, USA

    Guive Balooch

  8. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    Onur Gur & John A. Rogers

  9. Department of Medicine & Sarver Heart Center, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85724, USA

    Phat L. Tran, Jessi R. Crosby & Marvin J. Slepian

  10. Institute for Materials Science and Max Bergmann Center of Biomaterials, TU Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany

    Marcin Meyer

  11. Center for Mechanics and Materials, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

    Yewang Su

  12. Academy Dermatologist Group Ltd, Tucson, Arizona 85710, USA

    Andrew S. Tedesco

  13. Department of BioMedical Engineering, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85724, USA

    Marvin J. Slepian

  14. Department of Chemistry and Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA

    John A. Rogers

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  1. Canan Dagdeviren
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Contributions

C.D. and J.A.R. designed the research; C.D., P.J., G.B., K.U., O.G., P.L.T., J.R.C., M.M., M.J.S. and J.A.R. performed the research; C.D., Y.Shi., R.C.W., Y.H. and J.A.R. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Y.Su assisted in designing the device structure; C.D., Y.Shi, P.J., G.B., P.L.T., J.R.C., A.S.T., M.J.S., Y.H. and J.A.R. analysed data; and C.D., Y.Shi, R.G., G.B., M.J.S., Y.H. and J.A.R. wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John A. Rogers.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Dagdeviren, C., Shi, Y., Joe, P. et al. Conformal piezoelectric systems for clinical and experimental characterization of soft tissue biomechanics. Nature Mater 14, 728–736 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4289

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