Shaanxi Normal University, the Key Laboratory of Ultrasound of Shaanxi Province, School of Physics and Information Technology, Xi'an 710062, China.
Shaanxi Normal University, the Key Laboratory of Ultrasound of Shaanxi Province, School of Physics and Information Technology, Xi'an 710062, China.
Ultrasonics. 2024 Dec;144:107396. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2024.107396. Epub 2024 Jul 4.
Ultrasound shear wave elastography is an imaging modality that noninvasively assesses mechanical properties of tissues. The results of elastic imaging are obtained by accurately estimating the propagation velocity of shear wave fronts. However, the acquisition rate of the shear wave acquisition device is limited by the hardware of the system. Therefore, increasing the collection rate of shear waves can directly improve the quality of shear wave velocity images. In addition, the problem of velocity reconstruction with relatively small elastic inclusions has always been a challenge in elastic imaging and a very important and urgent issue in early disease diagnosis. For the problem of elastography detection of the shape and boundary of inclusions in tissues, Time-sharing latency excitation frame composite imaging (TS-FCI) method is proposed for tissue elasticity measurement. The method fuses the shear wave motion data generated by time sharing and latency excitation to obtain a set of composite shear wave motion data. Based on the shear wave motion data, the local shear wave velocity image is reconstructed in the frequency domain to obtain the elastic information of the tissue. The experimental results show that the TS-FCI method has a velocity estimation error of 11 % and a contrast to noise ratio (CNR) of 3.81 when estimating inclusions with smaller dimensions (2.53 mm). Furthermore, when dealing with inclusions with small elastic changes (10 kPa), the velocity estimation error is 3 % and the CNR is 3.21. Compared to conventional time-domain and frequency-domain analysis methods, the proposed method has advantages. Results and analysis have shown that this method has potential promotional value in the quantitative evaluation of organizational elasticity.
超声剪切波弹性成像是一种非侵入性评估组织力学特性的成像方式。弹性成像的结果是通过准确估计剪切波前沿的传播速度获得的。然而，剪切波采集设备的采集速率受到系统硬件的限制。因此，提高剪切波的采集速率可以直接提高剪切波速度图像的质量。此外，弹性成像中相对较小的弹性包含物的速度重建问题一直是一个挑战，也是早期疾病诊断中非常重要和紧迫的问题。针对组织中包含物的弹性成像检测形状和边界的问题，提出了分时延迟激励帧复合成像（TS-FCI）方法用于组织弹性测量。该方法融合了分时和延迟激励产生的剪切波运动数据，得到一组复合剪切波运动数据。基于剪切波运动数据，在频域中重建局部剪切波速度图像，得到组织的弹性信息。实验结果表明，当估计较小尺寸（2.53mm）的包含物时，TS-FCI 方法的速度估计误差为 11%，对比噪声比（CNR）为 3.81。此外，当处理弹性变化较小（10kPa）的包含物时，速度估计误差为 3%，CNR 为 3.21。与传统的时域和频域分析方法相比，该方法具有优势。结果和分析表明，该方法在组织弹性的定量评估中具有潜在的推广价值。
