The Superviscous Body

On Tuesday, 1 June 2021, the second talk of the new online Cluster lecture series »Talking Matters« took place. Ingolf Sack from Charité Berlin spoke on invitation of the project »Cutting« about »The Superviscous Body – Imaging the Mechanical Behavior of Organs and Tissues by Shear Waves«.

The lecture was given in English and was part of the online lecture series of the Cluster of Excellence »Matters of Activity« entitled »Talking Matters«.

Abstract

Elastography is palpation by medical imaging for clinical diagnosis. Elastography acquires shear wave images with MRI or sonography and converts them into maps of stiffness and viscosity. These key elements of elastography open windows into the biophysics of soft tissue in humans. Many fundamental pathological processes such as inflammation, fibrosis, tumor growth, or malignant transformation are influenced or triggered by altered mechanical properties of cells or extracellular matrix. After an introduction into the basic concepts of elastography, this talk will focus on the exploration of biomechanical signatures of diseases in micro tissues, in vivo animals and patients - all investigated with shear waves of frequencies from 1 to 1,000 Hz revealing the superviscous nature of soft body tissues.

CV

Ingolf Sack is full professor for Experimental Radiology and Elastography at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. He received a PhD in Chemistry at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, for the development of methods in NMR spectroscopy. He worked at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and at the Sunnybrook Hospital Toronto, Canada. Since 2003 he leads an interdisciplinary team of physicists, engineers, chemists and physicians which has pioneered pivotal developments in time-harmonic elastography of both MRI and ultrasound for many medical applications.