Lee Haneul, Kim Kyuseok, Lee Youngjin
Department of Physical Therapy, Gachon University, 191, Hambakmoero, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon 21936, Korea.
Department of Radiation Convergence Engineering, Yonsei University, 1, Yonseidae-gil, Wonju-si, Gangwon-do, Korea.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2020 Jun 1;10(6):362. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics10060362.
Shear wave elastography with ultrasound is a noninvasive method used for measuring stiffness in the human body. Shear wave elastography can be used for accurately and quantitatively measuring stiffness. However, its disadvantage is that the stiffness value can vary significantly because the region of interest (ROI) setting depends on the diagnostic operator. In this study, a stiffness measurement program using color mapping in shear wave elastography was developed to address the above-mentioned disadvantage. Color map and color ratios were obtained and evaluated for major lower limb muscles (i.e., biceps femoris, medial gastrocnemius, rectus femoris, and tibialis anterior) at active voluntary contraction. According to the result, when the developed program was used, a small standard deviation compared to the conventional stiffness measurement method, such as kilopascal or meter per second unit using ROIs, was measured in all cases. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that the stiffness measurement method using our program is expected to improve reliability in shear wave elastography ultrasound imaging.
超声剪切波弹性成像术是一种用于测量人体组织硬度的非侵入性方法。剪切波弹性成像术可用于准确、定量地测量组织硬度。然而，其缺点是由于感兴趣区域（ROI）的设置依赖于诊断操作人员，硬度值可能会有显著差异。在本研究中，为解决上述缺点，开发了一种在剪切波弹性成像术中使用颜色映射的硬度测量程序。在主动自主收缩时，获取并评估了主要下肢肌肉（即股二头肌、腓肠肌内侧头、股直肌和胫骨前肌）的颜色映射和颜色比率。根据结果，当使用所开发的程序时，与使用ROI的传统硬度测量方法（如千帕或米每秒单位）相比，在所有情况下测量的标准差都较小。总之，我们的结果表明，使用我们程序的硬度测量方法有望提高超声剪切波弹性成像的可靠性。
