Real-time single track location ultrasound elasticity imaging using graphic processing units

Ultrasound Shearwave Elasticity Imaging (SWEI) is a set of methods for measuring the elastic properties of biological tissues. Since the elastic properties of tissue are known to change with disease state, the application of these methods to clinical staging of disease is an active area of research. However, the fundamental signal generation and processing techniques required to make these elastic property measurements are still being developed. Our technique, Single Track Location Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (STL-ARFI) imaging, was developed to address spatial uncertainties in the tracking of the shearwaves. Yet, to apply the method in a clinical setting, real-time processing is required. In this work, we develop a signal processing package that provides real-time STL-ARFI elastic images using Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). This acceleration is achieved by way of a highly optimized Windowed Normalized Cross-Correlation (WNCC) algorithm achieving over 5000 frames per second of displacement estimation.