Recovery of material parameters of soft hyperelastic tissue by an inverse spectral technique

An inverse spectral method is developed for recovering a spatially inhomogeneous shear modulus for soft tissue. The study is motivated by a novel use of the intravascular ultrasound technique to image arteries. The arterial wall is idealized as a nonlinear isotropic cylindrical hyperelastic body. A boundary value problem is formulated for the response of the arterial wall within a specific class of quasistatic deformations reflective of the response due to imposed blood pressure. Subsequently, a boundary value problem is developed via an asymptotic construction modeling intravascular ultrasound interrogation which generates small amplitude, high frequency time harmonic vibrations superimposed on the static finite deformation. This leads to a system of second order ordinary Sturm–Liouville boundary value problems that are then employed to reconstruct the shear modulus through a nonlinear inverse spectral technique. Numerical examples are demonstrated to show the viability of the method.