Ultrasound Elastography for Biomedical Applications and Medicine

10 Validation of Quantitative Linear and Nonlinear Compression Elastography

Jean Francois Dord¹, Sevan Goenezen¹, Assad A. Oberai¹, Paul E. Barbone², Jingfeng Jiang³, Timothy J. Hall⁴ and Theo Pavan⁵

¹ Department of Mechanical Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA

² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

³ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, USA

⁴ Medical Physics Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

⁵ Departmento de Física, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

10.1 Introduction

Over the last few decades elastography, or elasticity imaging, has emerged as a novel imaging modality that may be used to detect and diagnose malignant tumors 1, 2, 3. The premise behind this role for elastography is that disease often alters tissue microstructure, which in turns leads to altered macroscopic tissue properties. Most efforts in elastography have focused on recovering the linear properties of tissues 4, 5, 6 while ignoring their nonlinear behavior which becomes evident at large strains. Recent ex vivo data suggests that the nonlinear elastic behavior may play an important role in differentiating benign and malignant tissue, with the concensus being that malignant tissue tends to stiffen to a larger extent with increasing strain 7, 8, 9. This leads to the intriguing possibility of using the nonlinear behavior of tissue to ...