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UBC Theses and Dissertations

A wave equation approach to ultrasound elastography Baghani, Ali

Abstract

Tissue elastography is a field of medical imaging which deals with obtaining images of tissue mechanical properties, in particular tissue elasticity. Every elastography imaging system has three major components: an exciter, an imaging system, and an image processing software module. The principle of operation of these systems is that softer and harder tissues react differently to a mechanical excitation. The imaging system captures images of the tissue as the mechanical exciter deforms the tissue. The image processing software module then computes the tissue motion from the acquired images, and solves an inverse problem to obtain tissue elasticity from tissue displacements. In ultrasound elastography all three components of the displacement are not available, and the measurement is carried out only on the imaging plane. The problem of inversion using partial measurements is an inherently challenging problem. To solve this problem the phase speed is estimated in the first place. This thesis studies the process of estimating tissue elasticity from tissue displacements, using the phase speed estimation. It is shown that, in general, the elasticity cannot be inferred from the phase speed, but under certain boundary and excitation conditions, a relationship exists between the phase speed and the elasticity. However the relationship depends on the boundary and excitation conditions. Based on the developed results, a novel rheometry method is proposed for visco-elastic characterization of tissue samples. To increase the resolution of the elasticity images it is of interest to use higher frequencies of excitation. However the inherent low frame rate of ultrasound systems posed a limitation. A novel high-frame-rate ultrasound system is introduced which is capable of tracking motions of up to 500Hz. The high-frame-rate system is used in conjunction with the inversion algorithms to form an elastography system. The performance of the system is tested experimentally on tissue mimicking material having hard and soft inclusions.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International