Song Pengfei, Macdonald Michael, Behler Russell, Lanning Justin, Wang Michael, Urban Matthew, Manduca Armando, Zhao Heng, Callstrom Matthew, Alizad Azra, Greenleaf James, Chen Shigao
IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2015 Feb;62(2):290-302. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2014.006628.
Two-dimensional shear-wave elastography presents 2-D quantitative shear elasticity maps of tissue, which are clinically useful for both focal lesion detection and diffuse disease diagnosis. Realization of 2-D shear-wave elastography on conventional ultrasound scanners, however, is challenging because of the low tracking pulse-repetition-frequency (PRF) of these systems. Although some clinical and research platforms support software beamforming and plane-wave imaging with high PRF, the majority of current clinical ultrasound systems do not have the software beamforming capability, which presents a critical challenge for translating the 2-D shear-wave elastography technique from laboratory to clinical scanners. To address this challenge, this paper presents a time-aligned sequential tracking (TAST) method for shear-wave tracking on conventional ultrasound scanners. TAST takes advantage of the parallel beamforming capability of conventional systems and realizes high-PRF shear-wave tracking by sequentially firing tracking vectors and aligning shear wave data in the temporal direction. The comb-push ultrasound shear elastography (CUSE) technique was used to simultaneously produce multiple shear wave sources within the field-of-view (FOV) to enhance shear wave SNR and facilitate robust reconstructions of 2-D elasticity maps. TAST and CUSE were realized on a conventional ultrasound scanner. A phantom study showed that the shear-wave speed measurements from the conventional ultrasound scanner were in good agreement with the values measured from other 2-D shear wave imaging technologies. An inclusion phantom study showed that the conventional ultrasound scanner had comparable performance to a state-of-the-art shear-wave imaging system in terms of bias and precision in measuring different sized inclusions. Finally, in vivo case analysis of a breast with a malignant mass, and a liver from a healthy subject demonstrated the feasibility of using the conventional ultrasound scanner for in vivo 2-D shear-wave elastography. These promising results indicate that the proposed technique can enable the implementation of 2-D shear-wave elastography on conventional ultrasound scanners and potentially facilitate wider clinical applications with shear-wave elastography.
二维剪切波弹性成像可呈现组织的二维定量剪切弹性图,这在局灶性病变检测和弥漫性疾病诊断中都具有临床应用价值。然而,在传统超声扫描仪上实现二维剪切波弹性成像具有挑战性,因为这些系统的跟踪脉冲重复频率(PRF)较低。尽管一些临床和研究平台支持具有高PRF的软件波束形成和平面波成像,但当前大多数临床超声系统不具备软件波束形成能力,这对于将二维剪切波弹性成像技术从实验室转化到临床扫描仪来说是一个关键挑战。为应对这一挑战,本文提出了一种用于在传统超声扫描仪上进行剪切波跟踪的时间对齐顺序跟踪(TAST)方法。TAST利用传统系统的并行波束形成能力,通过顺序发射跟踪向量并在时间方向上对齐剪切波数据来实现高PRF剪切波跟踪。梳状推挤超声剪切弹性成像(CUSE)技术用于在视野(FOV)内同时产生多个剪切波源,以提高剪切波信噪比并促进二维弹性图的稳健重建。TAST和CUSE在传统超声扫描仪上得以实现。一项体模研究表明,传统超声扫描仪测得的剪切波速度与其他二维剪切波成像技术测得的值高度一致。一项包含体模研究表明,在测量不同大小的内含物时,传统超声扫描仪在偏差和精度方面与先进的剪切波成像系统具有相当的性能。最后,对一例患有恶性肿块的乳房和一名健康受试者的肝脏进行的体内病例分析证明了使用传统超声扫描仪进行体内二维剪切波弹性成像的可行性。这些有前景的结果表明,所提出的技术能够在传统超声扫描仪上实现二维剪切波弹性成像,并有可能促进剪切波弹性成像在更广泛临床中的应用。