Three dimensional shear wave elastographic reconstruction of ablations

Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for three dimensional (3D) reconstruction of tumor ablations using ultrasound electrode vibration elastography. Shear wave velocity, which is used as a surrogate for tissue stiffness, is estimated by perturbing the ablation needle and tracking frame-to-frame displacements using radiofrequency ultrasound echo data. This process is repeated over many imaging planes that share a common axis of intersection collinear with needle. A 3D volume is reconstructed by solving an optimization problem which smoothly approximates shear wave velocities on a stack of transverse planes. The mean shear wave velocity estimates obtained in the phantom experiments are within 20% of those measured using a commercial shear wave imaging system.