title: An ultrasound elastography method to determine the local stiffness of arteries with guided circumferential waves.
abstract: Arterial stiffness is highly correlated with the functions of the artery and may serve as an important diagnostic criterion for some cardiovascular diseases. To date, it remains a challenge to quantitatively assess local arterial stiffness in a non-invasive manner. To address this challenge, we investigated the possibility of determining arterial stiffness using the guided circumferential wave (GCW) induced in the arterial wall by a focused acoustic radiation force. The theoretical model for the dispersion analysis of the GCW is presented, and a finite element model has been established to calculate the dispersion curve. Our results show that under described conditions, the dispersion relations of the GCW are basically independent of the curvature of the arterial wall and can be well-described using the Lamb wave (LW) model. Based on this conclusion, an inverse method is proposed to characterize the elastic modulus of artery. Both numerical experiments and phantom experiments had been performed to validate the proposed method. We show that our method can be applied to the cases in which the artery has local stenosis and/or the geometry of the artery cross-section is irregular; therefore, this method holds great potential for clinical use.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomechanics and Medical Engineering, AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China.
authors.forename: Guo-Yang
authors.initials: GY
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China.
authors.forename: Qiong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomechanics and Medical Engineering, AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China.
authors.forename: Guoqiang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomechanics and Medical Engineering, AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China.
authors.forename: Jianwen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomechanics and Medical Engineering, AML, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China. Electronic address: caoyanping@tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yanping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
mesh_terms: D001158:Arteries / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D054459:Elasticity Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D020342:Finite Element Analysis; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D059289:Vascular Stiffness
keywords: Arterial stiffness; Finite element analysis; Guided circumferential wave; Inverse method; Shear wave elastography