The understanding of the mechanical behavior of the muscle tissue is an important field of investigation with different applications in medicine, car crash and sport. Currently, few in vivo imaging techniques are able to characterize the mechanical properties of muscle. Thus, this study aims at developing an in vivo identification method based on displacement fieldmeasurements. The identification approach is composed of 3 dependent steps. The first step consists in performing a 2D MRI acquisition of the thigh in order to segment manually the muscle (quadriceps, ischio, gracilis and sartorius) and fat tissues. A Neo-Hookean model is chosen to characterize the hyperelastic behavior (C10, D). Secondly, an experimental compressiondevice is developed to measure the in vivo displacement field using ultrasound and Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques. Finally, an inverse method is implemented to identify the C10 and D parameters of each soft tissue. A numerical example is used to quantify the identification error on each parameter. Displacement field measurements confirm the ultrasound observations. They are also validated by the cartographies of the strain fields, which are obtained by the diffuse approximation method. Using the numerical example, the identification leads to low errors on the C10 (< 3%) and D (< 7%) parameters. Identified values of the mechanical parameters are in good agreement with the literature. All results validate the implemented identification method. In the long term, this protocol will allow to follow the evolution of pathologies and to conduct predictive simulations.
