Wave Finite Element modelling of biological waveguides: an arterial case study

Wave propagation in soft biological tissues is increasingly studied for elastography and non-invasive diagnostics. This work investigates the application of a three-dimensional Wave Finite Element (WFE) approach for the analysis of guided waves in hyperelastic biological tissues considering the arterial system. The formulation combines three-dimensional finite elements with Bloch periodicity conditions and adopts the Gasser–Ogden–Holzapfel (GOH) constitutive model to account for fibre dispersion, anisotropy, and prestress effects. The results show that the proposed approach effectively captures the main guided-wave characteristics of complex biological waveguides, such as arterial tissues, while enabling the incorporation of advanced constitutive descriptions within a computationally efficient modelling strategy. Comparisons with results available in the literature showed good agreement, highlighting the potential of the WFE approach for advanced elastography and diagnostic applications.