Pathological changes in soft-tissues are primarily correlated with changes in their mechanical and electrical properties and
are used to differentiate diseases from normals. Although there are evidences that establish the association of electrical
and mechanical properties in biological aspects, their interrelationships are not well established. In this work, an attempt
has been made to correlate electrical impedance of soft tissue-mimicking phantoms with those of its mechanical properties.
The electrical property of the polyacrylamide gel phantoms prepared as per the standard protocol was studied using a precision
impedance analyzer. Tensile tests were conducted using an universal testing machine and the derived mechanical properties
such as breaking stress, breaking strain, initial modulus and Young’s modulus were correlated with impedance values. It was
observed that for a given concentration of a gel phantom the percentage variation in impedance correlate well with the percentage
variation in the Young’s modulus. The magnitude of variation in Young’s modulus found to be more than that of the impedance.
Similar correlations were observed for other mechanical properties. It appears that this study seems to be useful as the research
on tissue mimicking phantom gels play important role in mechanical studies and in ultrasonic bioeffects. In this paper the
objectives of the study, methodology and the significance of results are discussed in detail.
Keywords palpation - mechanical properties - electrical impedance - soft tissue - polyacrylamide gel