More generally, this paper concludes that the probe stiffness matters in conditioning the shape of the likelihood function (sensor model) in a Bayesian framework to estimate a given feature in the tissue (in this case the nodule depth after having identified the location using lateral sweeps). However, when the tissue is inhomogeneous, multiple force prominence values will be present in the force profile. Then a suitable technique should be adopted to filter a target force prominence shape. One realtime solution is to convolve a target force shape on the measured force data. A data-driven approach can be used to build the target shape from a variety of tissue samples with a given feature in 