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Abstract Objective. Motivated by the diagnostic value of tissue viscosity beyond elasticity, the goal of this work is to develop robust methodologies based on shear wave elastography (SWE) to reconstruct combined elasticity and viscosity maps of soft tissues out of the measurement plane.Approach.Building on recent advancements in full-waveform inversion in reconstructing elasticity maps beyond the measurement plane, we propose to reconstruct a complete viscoelasticity map by novel combination of three ideas: (a) multiresolution imaging, where lower frequency content is used to reconstruct low resolution map, which is then utilized as a starting point for higher resolution reconstruction by including higher frequency content; (b) acquiring SWE data on multiple planes from multiple pushes, one at a time, and then simultaneously using all the data to invert for a single viscoelasticity map; (c) sequential reconstruction where combined viscoelasticity reconstruction is followed by fixing the elasticity map (and thus kinematics), and repeating the reconstruction but just for the viscosity map.Main results.We examine the proposed methodology using synthetic SWE data to reconstruct the viscoelastic properties of both homogeneous and heterogeneous tumor-like inclusions with shear modulus ranging from 3 to 20 kPa, and viscosity ranging from 1 to 3 Pa·s. Final validation is performedin silico, where the annular inclusion is reconstructed using noisy data with varying signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) of 30, 20 and 10 dB. While elasticity images are reasonably reconstructed even for poor SNR of 10 dB, viscosity imaging seem to require better SNR.Significance.This work, analogous to reconstructing 3D images from 2D measurements, offers a feasibility study for achieving 3D viscoelasticity reconstructions using conventional ultrasound scanners, potentially leading to biomarkers with greater specificity compared to currently available 2D elasticity images.
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Full waveform inversion for arterial viscoelasticity
Abstract Objective. Arterial viscosity is emerging as an important biomarker, in addition to the widely used arterial elasticity. This paper presents an approach to estimate arterial viscoelasticity using shear wave elastography (SWE).Approach. While dispersion characteristics are often used to estimate elasticity from SWE data, they are not sufficiently sensitive to viscosity. Driven by this, we develop a full waveform inversion (FWI) methodology, based on directly matching predicted and measured wall velocity in space and time, to simultaneously estimate both elasticity and viscosity. Specifically, we propose to minimize an objective function capturing the correlation between measured and predicted responses of the anterior wall of the artery.Results. The objective function is shown to be well-behaving (generally convex), leading us to effectively use gradient optimization to invert for both elasticity and viscosity. The resulting methodology is verified with synthetic data polluted with noise, leading to the conclusion that the proposed FWI is effective in estimating arterial viscoelasticity.Significance. Accurate estimation of arterial viscoelasticity, not just elasticity, provides a more precise characterization of arterial mechanical properties, potentially leading to a better indicator of arterial health.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2111234
- PAR ID:
- 10398540
- Publisher / Repository:
- IOP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Physics in Medicine & Biology
- Volume:
- 68
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0031-9155
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- Article No. 05NT02
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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