Digital image correlation by natural textures on biological skin

Research of mechanical behavior of biological skin requires accurate deformation measurement. Digital image correlation (DIC) is an optical method with high accuracy and low environment demands. In this paper, DIC is applied to measure the deformation of biological skin by matching the natural texture of biological skin instead of artificial speckle. In order to obtain better calculation results, the speckle-free DIC (SF-DIC) is proposed. This method avoids using the artificial speckle and only rely on the natural textures, in such situation the solutions about the optimal lighting conditions and the loss of accuracy and efficiency are proposed respectively. Two physical experiments are performed to validate and demonstrate the new methodology. The experimental results reveal that the SF-DIC has access to reliable calculation results without artificial speckle. The measurements proposed skip the step of making artificial speckle and may enable potential application in practice not only on the research of biological skin but also on the other materials with natural textures.

Automated summary

Accurate deformation measurement is essential for researching the mechanical behavior of biological skin. This paper applies digital image correlation (DIC) to measure the deformation of biological skin using natural textures instead of artificial speckle. To achieve better calculation results, a speckle-free DIC (SF-DIC) method is proposed, which avoids artificial speckle and relies solely on natural textures. Two physical experiments are conducted to validate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the new methodology. The results show that SF-DIC provides reliable calculation results without the need for artificial speckle, making it a potential practical application in the study of biological skin and other materials with natural textures.