Broadband-excitation-based mechanical spectroscopy of highly viscous tissue-mimicking phantoms

Abstract: Standard rheometers assess mechanical properties of viscoelastic samples up to 100~Hz, which often hinders the assessment of the local-scale dynamics. We demonstrate that high-frequency analysis can be achieved by inducing broadband Rayleigh waves and monitoring their media-dependent propagation using Optical Coherence Tomography. Here, we present a new broadband wave analysis based on two-dimensional Fourier Transformation. We validated this method by comparing the mechanical parameters to monochromatic excitation data and a standard oscillatory test. Our method allows for high-frequency mechanical spectroscopy, which could be used to investigate the local-scale dynamics of different biological tissues and the influence of diseases on their microstructure.