Figure 2

Mechanical parameters. (a) The area enclosed by the contour of the tissue displacement is a quantitative measure of the tissue configuration. The area enclosed by the undeformed configuration is called the reference configuration A₀ (i). The load dependent difference of each current tissue configuration A(p(t)) with respect to the reference configuration A₀ is called the tissue elevation ΔA(p(t)), which is indicative of tissue displacement (ii). (b) Evaluation of the mechanical parameters based on the history of the load dependent tissue configuration A(p(t)). Only cycles 5–10 were considered. The cyclic tissue displacement ΔA_i = A_i,max − A_i,0 was defined as the maximum tissue elevation in each cycle. The initial displacement was defined as the initial unloaded tissue configuration in cycle 5.