Comparison between time domain and frequency domain strain estimation in elastography

Elastography is a promising technique for detection and classification of abnormal growth and tumors in soft tissues. In this paper we propose a simple yet effective optimization to speed up the time-domain indirect strain estimation. The proposed method exploits the displacement values of the neighbours to predict the displacement and utilizes this predicted value to define an adaptive search region for finding the best match between pre and post compression signals. This Proposed method is faster than other block matching algorithms such as SAD, SSD or cross-correlation. We have evaluated the method using performance parameters such as elastrographic Signal to Noise Ratio (SNRe), elastrographic Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNRe), elastrographic Peak-Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNRe) and Mean Structural Similarity (MSSIM). For lower percentage of strain, the proposed method faster demonstrated similar performance to the other methods.