A note on strain estimation using correlation techniques [tissue]

This paper proposes a method to compute the local tissue strain, subject to an external compression, from pairs of radio frequency (r.f.) A-lines. It is an extension of a known technique which essentially consists in estimating tissue deformation from the gradient of the displacement field brought through local cross-correlation between pre- and post-compression A-lines. A model is introduced to provide a mathematical framework to study these methods. It is shown, from simulation results, that the proposed method is more robust and less prone to strain artifact than the one that estimates the strain from the gradient of the displacement field of the compressed tissue