Non-contact acoustic method for the simultaneous measurement of thickness and acoustic properties of biological tissues.

The frequency dependence of the magnitude and phase shift of reflected waves from a thin tissue specimen has been found to yield characteristic patterns as a function of the specimen thickness. By analysis of those characteristic patterns, the specimen thickness can be determined so that the attenuation constant and the sound speed can be obtained by a non-contact procedure. The method is demonstrated in the frequency range 100 MHz to 200 MHz, using a scanning acoustic microscope and approximately 10 microns thick myocardial tissue samples of human origin, one paraffin embedded.