Dependencies of phase velocities of ultrasonic guided waves on cortical thickness in soft tissue-bone mimicking phantoms

Change in the cortical thickness of long bones occurring with aging and osteoporosis is known to be a risk factor for fracture. The present study aims to investigate the dependencies of phase velocities of ultrasonic guided waves on the cortical thickness in 7 soft tissue-bone mimicking phantoms consisting of acrylic plates covered by a 2 mm-thick silicone rubber layer by using the axial transmission technique with a pair of transducers with a center frequency of 200 kHz and a diameter of 12.7 mm. Two distinct propagating waves with different velocities, the First Arriving Signal (FAS) and the Slow Guided Waved (SGW), were consistently observed for all the soft tissue-bone mimicking phantoms. The FAS velocity decreased slightly with increasing thickness, whereas the SGW velocity increased strongly with increasing thickness. The FAS and the SGW velocities were found to be closely consistent with the S0 and the A0 Lamb mode velocities for a free acrylic plate, respectively, suggesting that the presence of the soft tissue mimicking material (2 mm-thick silicone rubber layer) covering the acrylic plates does not influence significantly the velocity measurements.