Multikilohertz optical microelastography for viscoelastic characterization of soft biomaterials demonstrated on melanoma spheroids

Significance

The stiffness and viscosity of biological tissue determine how mechanical forces are transmitted and dissipated within it, and both are increasingly used to study tumor growth and treatment response. Measuring these properties within small three-dimensional samples is challenging: it requires shear waves at kilohertz frequencies, which attenuate over short distances, while conventional excitation methods introduce additional signal loss that is difficult to separate from the intrinsic dissipation of the tissue.