Spectral Quantification of Nonlinear Elasticity Using Acoustoelasticity and Shear-Wave Dispersion

IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2019 Dec;66(12):1845-1855. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2019.2933952. Epub 2019 Aug 8.

Abstract

Tissue biomechanical properties are known to be sensitive to pathological changes. Accordingly, various techniques have been developed to estimate tissue mechanical properties. Shear-wave elastography (SWE) measures shear-wave speed (SWS) in tissues, which can be related to shear modulus. Although viscosity or stress-strain nonlinearity may act as confounder of SWE, their explicit characterization may also provide additional information about tissue composition as a contrast modality. Viscosity can be related to frequency dispersion of SWS, which can be characterized using multi-frequency measurements, herein called spectral SWE (SSWE). Additionally, nonlinear shear modulus can be quantified and parameterized based on SWS changes with respect to applied stress, a phenomenon called acoustoelasticity (AE). In this work, we characterize the nonlinear parameters of tissue as a function of excitation frequency by utilizing both AE and SSWE together. For this, we apply incremental amounts of quasi-static stress on a medium, while imaging and quantifying SWS dispersion via SSWE. Results from phantom and ex vivo porcine liver experiments demonstrate the feasibility of measuring frequency-dependent nonlinear parameters using the proposed method. SWS propagation in porcine liver tissue was observed to change from 1.8 m/s at 100 Hz to 3.3 m/s at 700 Hz, while increasing by approximately 25% from a strain of 0% to 12% across these frequencies.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Elasticity / physiology*
  • Elasticity Imaging Techniques / methods*
  • Equipment Design
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • Liver / diagnostic imaging
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Swine