Quantitative imaging of low-contrast elastic modulus distributions in tissues using elastography

Elastography is used to image low elastic contrast tissue structures with high contrast-to-noise ratio. This is demonstrated using data obtained from fresh lamb kidneys in vitro. The elastograms suggest that the Young´s modulus slowly decays from the cortex to the renal sinus. Such modulus variation is corroborated by independent measurements of Young´s modulus obtained using an Instron machine. It is found that the renal cortex is approximately twice as hard as the renal sinus. Implications about the ability to quantitatively image the elastic moduli of such tissues are discussed