Biomechanics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Biomechanics, including details on mechanics of living organisms, movement, locomotion, prosthetic limbs.

Non-linear elastic properties of the lingual and facial tissues assessed by indentation technique. Application to the biomechanics of speech production.

Gerard JM, Ohayon J, Luboz V, Perrier P, Payan Y

Laboratoire TIMC/IMAG, Faculte de Medecine de Grenoble, Institut d'Ingenierie de l'Information de Sante, Pavillon Taillefer, UMR CNRS 5525, Université Joseph Fourier de Grenoble, 38706 La Tronche, France.

This paper aims at characterizing the mechanical behavior of two human anatomical structures, namely the tongue and the cheek. For this, an indentation experiment was provided, by measuring the mechanical response of tongue and cheek tissues removed from the fresh cadaver of a 74 year old woman. Non-linear relationships were observed between the force applied to the tissues and the corresponding displacements. To infer the mechanical constitutive laws from these measurements, a finite element (FE) analysis was provided. This analysis aimed at simulating the indentation experiment. An optimization process was used to determine the FE constitutive laws that provided the non-linear force/displacements observed during the indentation experiments. The tongue constitutive law was used for simulations provided by a 3D FE biomechanical model of the human tongue. This dynamical model was designed to study speech production. Given a set of tongue muscular commands, which levels correspond to the force classically measured during speech production, the FE model successfully simulated the main tongue movements observed during speech data.

Published 18 November 2005 in Med Eng Phys, 27(10): 884-92.
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