Patent Document ID: 20100087756
Application ID: 12244235
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of soft tissue characterization and differentiation comprising the steps of: (a) detecting a lesion and its location in said tissue; (b) collecting a sequence of stress patterns as a function of an increasing compression force when said tissue is compressed over said location; (c) calculating from said sequence at least three elasticity features characterizing said lesion, said elasticity features selected from a group consisting of strain hardening, loading curve average slope, lesion peak signal under a predetermined load, tissue heterogeneity, lesion shape and lesion mobility; (d) comparing said at least three calculated elasticity features using a statistical classifier against a dataset of previously collected samples with known clinical status, said samples including data on same calculated elasticity features, and (e) providing a diagnosis of said soft tissue based on that comparison.