Investigation of viscoelastic properties of human liver tissue using MR elastography and FE modeling

Viscoelasticity is an inherent property of the soft biological tissue and is increasingly used as a diagnostic parameter, e.g. in characterizing liver fibrosis and breast tumors or tissue-mimicking phantoms preparation. MR elastography (MRE) enables the noninvasive determination of the viscoelastic behavior of human internal organs. In this study, multifrequency magnetic resonance elastography was used to investigate and validate the numerical simulation of liver viscoelastic phantom generated by ABAQUS. The dynamic behavior of shear storage (G′) and loss moduli (G″) obtained by MRE at different frequency ranges were used to generate viscoelastic FE model of liver tissue. Then, shear modulus(μ) and shear viscosity(η) were compared to other experimental data. MRE validate the finite element as an effective technique for measurement of rheologic material properties.