IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2024 Apr;71(4):448-458. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2024.3366540. Epub 2024 Mar 28.
Acoustic radiation force (ARF)-based shear wave elastography (SWE) is a clinically available ultrasound imaging mode that noninvasively and quantitatively measures tissue stiffness. Current implementations of ARF-SWE are largely limited to 2-D imaging, which does not provide a robust estimation of heterogeneous tissue mechanical properties. Existing 3-D ARF-SWE solutions that are clinically available are based on wobbler probes, which cannot provide true 3-D shear wave motion detection. Although 3-D ARF-SWE based on 2-D matrix arrays have been previously demonstrated, they do not provide a practical solution because of the need for a high channel-count ultrasound system (e.g., 1024-channel) to provide adequate volume rates and the delicate circuitries (e.g., multiplexers) that are vulnerable to the long-duration "push" pulses. To address these issues, here we propose a new 3-D ARF-SWE method based on the 2-D row-column addressing (RCA) array which has a much lower element count (e.g., 256), provides an ultrafast imaging volume rate (e.g., 2000 Hz), and can withstand the push pulses. In this study, we combined the comb-push shear elastography (CUSE) technique with 2-D RCA for enhanced SWE imaging field-of-view (FOV). In vitro phantom studies demonstrated that the proposed method had robust 3-D SWE performance in both homogenous and inclusion phantoms. An in vivo study on a breast cancer patient showed that the proposed method could reconstruct 3-D elasticity maps of the breast lesion, which was validated using a commercial ultrasound scanner. These results demonstrate strong potential for the proposed method to provide a viable and practical solution for clinical 3-D ARF-SWE.
基于声辐射力（ARF）的剪切波弹性成像（SWE）是一种临床可用的超声成像模式，可无创且定量地测量组织硬度。当前的 ARF-SWE 实现主要限于 2-D 成像，无法对异质组织力学性质进行稳健估计。现有的临床可用的基于 ARF 的 3-D SWE 解决方案基于摆动器探头，但无法提供真正的 3-D 剪切波运动检测。尽管以前已经证明了基于 2-D 矩阵阵列的 3-D ARF-SWE，但由于需要高通道计数超声系统（例如 1024 通道）来提供足够的体积率以及易受长时间“推送”脉冲影响的精细电路（例如多路复用器），因此它们不是实际可行的解决方案。为了解决这些问题，我们在这里提出了一种新的基于 2-D 行-列寻址（RCA）阵列的 3-D ARF-SWE 方法，该方法的元件数量要低得多（例如 256），提供了超快的成像体积率（例如 2000 Hz），并且能够承受推送脉冲。在这项研究中，我们将梳状推剪切弹性成像（CUSE）技术与 2-D RCA 相结合，以增强 SWE 成像视场（FOV）。体外仿体研究表明，该方法在同质和包含仿体中均具有稳健的 3-D SWE 性能。对一名乳腺癌患者的体内研究表明，该方法可以重建乳房病变的 3-D 弹性图，该方法使用商业超声扫描仪进行了验证。这些结果表明，该方法具有很强的潜力，可以为临床 3-D ARF-SWE 提供可行且实用的解决方案。
