DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Implementation of an Ultrasound Elasticity Imaging System

  • Cho Gae-Young (Research Center, Medison) ;
  • Yoon Ra-Young (Research Center, Medison) ;
  • Park Jeong-Man (Departments of Physics, Daejin University) ;
  • Kwon Sung-Jae (Departments of Communication Engineering, Daejin University) ;
  • Ahn Young-Bok (Department of Electronic Engineering, Konkuk University) ;
  • Bae Moo-Ho (Division of Information Engineering and Telecommunication, Hallym University) ;
  • Jeong Mok-Kun (Departments of Electronic Engineering Daejin University)
  • Published : 2006.06.01

Abstract

Recently, active research has been going on to measure the elastic modulus of human soft tissue with medical ultrasound imaging systems for the purpose of diagnosing cancers or tumors which have been difficult to detect with conventional B-mode imaging techniques. In this paper, a real-time ultrasonic elasticity imaging system is implemented in software on a Pentium processor-based ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system. Soft tissue is subjected to external vibration, and the resulting tissue displacements change the phase of received echoes, which is in turn used to estimate tissue elasticity. It was confirmed from experiment with a phantom that the implemented elasticity imaging system could differentiate between soft and hard regions, where the latter is twice harder than the former, while operating at an adequate frame rate of 20 frames/s.

Keywords

References

  1. P. A. Lewin, 'Diagnostic imaging of the nonlinear acoustic parameter B/A,' J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., vol. 79, pp. S44-S45, 1986
  2. C. A. Cain, H. Nishiyama, and K. Katakura, 'On ultrasonic techniques for measurement of the nonlinear parameter B/A in fluid-like media,' in Proc. IEEE Ultrason. Symp., 1986, pp. 885-888
  3. J. Ophir, I. Cespedes, H. Ponnekanti, Y. Yazdi, and X. Li, 'Elastography: A quantitative method for imaging the elasticity of biological tissues,' Ultrason. Imag., vol. 13, pp. 111-134, 1991 https://doi.org/10.1016/0161-7346(91)90079-W
  4. Y. Yarnakoshi, J. Sato, and T. Sato, 'Ultrasonic imaging of internal vibration of soft tissue under forced vibration,' IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelect. Freq. Contr., vol. 37, pp. 45-53, 1990 https://doi.org/10.1109/58.46969
  5. L. Gao, S. K. Alam, and K. J. Parker, 'A new vibration theory for sonoelasticity imaging', in Proc. IEEE Ultrason. Symp., vol. 2, 1993, pp. 879-882
  6. J. M. Park, S. J. Kwon, and M. K. Jeong, 'Wave generation and its effect on lesion detection in sonoelastography; Theory and simulation study,' J. Acoust. Soc. Korea, vol. 25, pp. 282-293, 2005
  7. D. K. Ahn, J. M. Park, S. J. Kwon, and M. K. Jeong, 'A study on the stiffness estimation in soft tissue using speckle brightness variance tracking', J. Biomed. Eng. Res., vol. 24, pp. 141-149, 2003
  8. M. K. Jeong, J. M. Park, S. J. Kwon, and G. Y. Cho, 'Realization of realtime tissue stiffness estimation in medical ultrasoundimaging system,' in Proc. Int'l Conf. Ultrason. Meas. Imag. Tissue Elasticity, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA, 2003
  9. R. Y. Yoon, S. J. Kwon, M. H. Bae, and M. K. Jeong, 'Implementation of strain imaging modality in medical ultrasonic imaging system,' J. lEEK, vol. 42, pp. 53-62, 2005
  10. M. K. Jeong and S. J. Kwon, 'Tissue stiffness imaging method using temporal variation of ultrasound speckle pattern,' IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelect. Freq. Contr., vol. 50, pp.457-460, 2003 https://doi.org/10.1109/TUFFC.2003.1197969
  11. M. K. Jeong, J. M. Park, and S. J. Kwon, 'Tissue stiffness measurement using vibrational force in medical ultrasound imaging system,' in Proc. Inter-Noise, Jeju, Korea, 2003
  12. Y. B. Ahn, M. K. Jeong, S. J. Kwon, and M. J. Choi, 'Imaging of thermally ablated tissue using ultrasonic elastography,' Key Engineering Materials, vol. 272, pp. 2042-2047, 2004
  13. J. M. Park, S. J. Kwon, and M. K. Jeong, 'A study of vibration characteristics for ultrasonic elasticity imaging,' in Proc. Int'l Conf. Ultrason. Meas. Imag. Tissue Elasticity, Lake Windermere, United Kingdom, 2004
  14. J. M. Park, S. J. Kwon, M. K. Jeong, and M. H. Bae, 'Theoretical and simulation study of wave generation and its effect on lesion detection in sonoelastography,' in Proc. Int'l Conf. Ultrason. Meas. lmag. Tissue Elasticity, Austin, Texas, USA, 2005
  15. Medison, http;//www.medison.com and http://www.accuvix.com
  16. T. J. Hall, M. F. Insana, and T. A. Krouskop, 'Phantom materials for elastography,' IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelect. Freq. Contr., vol. 44, pp. 1355-1365, 1997 https://doi.org/10.1109/58.656639
  17. T. A. Krouskop, T. M. Wheeler, F. Kallel, B. S. Garra, and T. Hall, 'Elastic moduli of breast and prostate tissues under compression,' Ultrason. Imag., vol. 20, pp. 260-274, 1998 https://doi.org/10.1177/016173469802000403
  18. Brnel and Kjaef, http://www.bksv.comandhttp://www.bksv.co.kr
  19. M. Fink, L. Sandrin, M. Tanter, S. Catheline, S. Chaffai, J. Bercoff, and J. L. Gennisson, 'Ultra high speed imaging of elasticity,' in Proc. Ultrason. Symp., 2002, pp. 1811-1820