journal article·2022-06-18Open access

Shear Wave Elastography Implementation on a Portable Research Ultrasound System: Initial Results

Damian Cacko, Marcin Lewandowski

Applied Sciences· Volume 12· Issue 12

Abstract

Ultrasound shear wave elastography (SWE) has emerged as a promising technique that enables the quantitative estimation of soft tissue stiffness. However, its practical implementation is complicated and presents a number of engineering challenges, including high-energy burst transmission, high-frame rate data acquisition and high computational requirements to process huge datasets. Therefore, to date, SWE has only been available for high-end commercial systems or bulk and expensive research platforms. In this work, we present a low-cost, portable and fully configurable 256-channel research system that is able to implement various SWE techniques. We evaluated its transmit capabilities using various push beam patterns and developed algorithms for the reconstruction of tissue stiffness maps. Three different push beam generation methods were evaluated in both homogeneous and heterogeneous experiments using an industry-standard elastography phantom. The results showed that it is possible to implement the SWE modality using a portable and cost-optimized system without significant image quality losses.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Ultrasound Imaging and Elastography · Photoacoustic and Ultrasonic Imaging · Ultrasound and Hyperthermia Applications

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Institute of Fundamental Technological Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland

us4us Ltd., 02-106 Warsaw, Poland

Funding

Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education · “Doktorat wdrożeniowy” (Industrial Doctoral Program)

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