Real-time transient elastography on standard ultrasound using mechanically induced vibration: System design and initial results

Tissue elasticity can be deduced from the study of the propagation of shear waves. Transient elastography by means of mechanical vibration has been well established in the literature as a means of assessing the elasticity of the soft tissue and shown to be useful in different clinical applications. Previous studies have focused mainly on custom single element ultrasound transducers and ultrafast ultrasound scanners. In this work, we report the design and implementation of a transient elastography system on a standard ultrasound scanner that enables quantitative assessment of tissue elasticity in real-time. We presents the actuator design as well as the proposed data acquisition schemes that enable imaging of transient shear waves both in 1D and 2D in addition to the reconstruction algorithms for estimating the Young´s modulus from these 1D and 2D wave images. The performance of the system is validated experimentally using a commercial elasticity phantom. In both 1D and 2D imaging modes, a good agreement was observed between the Young´s modulus reported by the phantom manufacturer and the Young´s modulus estimated by our system.