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Purpose: Most cancers are associated with biological and structural changes that lead to tissue stiffening. Therefore, imaging tissue stiffness using quasistatic ultrasound elastography (USE) can potentially be effective in cancer diagnosis. USE techniques developed for stiffness image reconstruction use noisy displacement data to obtain the stiffness images. In this study, we propose a technique to substantially improve the accuracy of the displacement data computed through ultrasound tissue motion tracking techniques,especially in the lateral direction. Methods: The proposed technique uses mathematical constraints derived from fundamental tissue mechanics principles to regularize displacement and strain fields obtained using Global Ultrasound Elastography (GLUE) and Second Order Ultrasound Elastography (SOUL) methods.The principles include a novel technique to enforce (1) tissue incompressibility using 3D Boussinesq model and (2) deformation compatibility using the compatibility differential equation. The technique was validated thoroughly using metrics pertaining to Signalto-Noise-Ratio (SNR), Contrast-to-Noise-Ratio (CNR) and Normalized Cross Correlation (NCC) for four tissue-mimicking phantom models and two clinical breast ultrasound elastography cases. Results: The results show substantial improvement in the displacement and strain images generated using the proposed technique. The tissue-mimicking phantom study results indicate that the proposed method is superior in improving image quality compared to the GLUE and SOUL techniques as it shows an average axial strain SNR and CNR improvement of 44% and 63%, and lateral strain SNR and CNR improvement of 130% and 435%, respectively. The results of the phantom study also indicate higher accuracy of displacement images obtained using the proposed technique, including improvement ranges of 7– 84% and 26–140% for axial and lateral displacement images, respectively. For the clinical cases, the results indicate average improvement of 48% and 64% in SNR and CNR, respectively,in the axial strain images,and average improvement of 40% and 41% in SNR and CNR, respectively, in the lateral strain images. Conclusion: The proposed method is very effective in producing improved estimate of tissue displacement and strain images, especially with the lateral displacement and strain where the improvement is highly remarkable. While the method shows promise for clinical applications, further investigation is necessary for rigorous assessment of the method’s performance in the clinic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atherosclerosis at the carotid bifurcation resulting in cerebral emboli is a major cause of ischemic stroke. Most strokes associated with carotid atherosclerosis can be prevented by lifestyle/dietary changes and pharmacological treatments if identified early by monitoring carotid plaque changes. Registration of 3-D ultrasound (US) images of carotid plaque obtained at different time points is essential for sensitive monitoring of plaque changes in volume and surface morphology. This registration technique should be nonrigid, since different head positions during image acquisition sessions cause relative bending and torsion in the neck, producing nonlinear deformations between the images. We modeled the movement of the neck using a 'twisting and bending' model with only six parameters for nonrigid registration. We evaluated the algorithm using 3-D US carotid images acquired at two different head positions to simulate images acquired at different times. We calculated the mean registration error (MRE) between the segmented vessel surfaces in the target image and the registered image using a distance-based error metric after applying our 'twisting and bending' model-based nonrigid registration algorithm. We achieved an average registration error of 0.80 [+ or -] 0.26 mm using our nonrigid registration technique, which was a significant improvement in registration accuracy over rigid registration, even with reduced degrees-of-freedom compared to the other nonrigid registration algorithms. Index Terms--Carotid artery plaque, image registration, ultrasound imaging.

Abstract Purpose of study To compare magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) with ventricular pressure changes in an animal model. Methods Three pigs of different cardiac physiology (weight, 25 to 53 kg; heart rate, 61 to 93 bpm; left ventricular [LV] end-diastolic volume, 35 to 70 ml) were subjected to invasive LV pressure measurement by catheter and noninvasive cardiac MRE. Cardiac MRE was performed in a short-axis view of the heart and applying a 48.3-Hz shear-wave stimulus. Relative changes in LV-shear wave amplitudes during the cardiac cycle were analyzed. Correlation coefficients between wave amplitudes and LV pressure as well as between wave amplitudes and LV diameter were determined. Results A relationship between MRE and LV pressure was observed in all three animals (R2 ≥ 0.76). No correlation was observed between MRE and LV diameter (R2 ≤ 0.15). Instead, shear wave amplitudes decreased 102 ± 58 ms earlier than LV diameters at systole and amplitudes increased 175 ± 40 ms before LV dilatation at diastole. Amplitude ratios between diastole and systole ranged from 2.0 to 2.8, corresponding to LV pressure differences of 60 to 73 mmHg. Conclusion Externally induced shear waves provide information reflecting intraventricular pressure changes which, if substantiated in further experiments, has potential to make cardiac MRE a unique noninvasive imaging modality for measuring pressure-volume function of the heart.