Chronic progressive pulmonary fibrosis is a major life-threatening condition with life expectancy of three to four years, for which effective treatment is still lacking. The preclinical and clinical development of anti-fibrotic drugs is hampered by profound methodological challenges such as a lack of sensitive biomarkers (i.e. measurable indicators of some biological state or condition) for early detection of fibrosis/inflammation and non-invasively differentiating between inflammation and fibrosis while testing new anti- fibrotic/inflammatory compounds. The ultimate goal of my interdisciplinary PhD project is to perform and develop novel ex vivo and in vivo experimental and analytical image-based techniques providing biomechanical properties of lung tissue, and this to gain a deeper insight into the role of lung mechanics as a novel biomarker for onset and progression of pulmonary fibrosis and inflammation and for differentiation between the inflammatory and fibrotic stages.