Staging of venous thrombosis using ultrasound elastrography

Exact age determination of deep venous thrombosis is of high importance for an appropriate treatment of the patient. The accuracy of available methods including sonography, phlebography, CT and MRT is often not sufficient. Therefore alternative approaches for staging thrombosis are desired. Blood clots leading to venous thrombosis undergo an organization process which results in a hardening with increasing age. In this work, ultrasound elastography is used to detect and characterize changes in stiffness of thrombosed vessels segments in vitro in a semi-quantitative way.