Collective indentation as a novel strategy for mechanical palpation tomography

The method of mechanical (or robotic) palpation tomography assumes the use of a rigid indenter for in vivo detecting the presence of tissue lesions by the quasi-static contact probe inspection of the surface of the human body. The interpretation of the indentation data requires the inverse solution to contact problems for inhomogeneous substrates. A particular interest has been drawn to quantitative and qualitative analysis of the deformation behavior of a homogeneous elastic substrate with a spherical inclusion under the action of a rigid probe on the substrate surface. In the present paper, using a first-order perturbation-based asymptotic model of multiple contact, it is shown that the indentation tomography problem can be solved in a more efficient way if a system of indenters is simultaneously employed for performing the mechanical palpation diagnostics.