Volumetric elasticity imaging with a 2-D CMUT array.
This article reports the use of a two-dimensional (2-D) capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) to acquire radio-frequency (RF) echo data from relatively large volumes of a simple ultrasound phantom to compare three-dimensional (3-D) elasticity imaging methods. Typical 2-D motion tracking for elasticity image formation was compared with three different methods of 3-D motion tracking, with sum-squared difference (SSD) used as the similarity measure. Differences among the algorithms were the degree to which they tracked elevational motion: not at all (2-D search), planar search, combination of multiple planes and plane independent guided search. The cross-correlation between the predeformation and motion-compensated postdeformation RF echo fields was used to quantify motion tracking accuracy. The lesion contrast-to-noise ratio was used to quantify image quality. Tracking accuracy and strain image quality generally improved with increased tracking sophistication. When used as input for a 3-D modulus reconstruction, high quality 3-D displacement estimates yielded accurate and low noise modulus reconstruction.
Medical Physics Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53705, USA. tgfisher@wisc.edu
Ted G
TG
Fisher
Timothy J
TJ
Hall
Satchi
S
Panda
Michael S
MS
Richards
Paul E
PE
Barbone
Jingfeng
J
Jiang
Jeff
J
Resnick
Steve
S
Barnes
D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D004548:Elasticity; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D014465:Ultrasonics