Biological tissues have complex structures, dynamics and interactions between their constituents.
When probing mechanical properties, differences are observed across spatial and temporal scales
owing to the tissue viscoelastic response. Quasistatic mechanical testing, ultrasound and AFM-based
techniques provide the traditional approach to measure stiffness based on the Young’s modulus. A
novel technique in the fields of biophotonics and biomechanics is Brillouin spectroscopy, which is a
contactless optical method to detect viscoelastic properties from the propagation of thermally-driven
acoustic waves or phonons at high frequencies, GHz. A longitudinal elastic modulus is detected,
whose significance in mechanobiology and clinical settings is currently emerging.
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