Key result
Combining compound plane wave imaging with a constrained Lagrangian speckle model estimator increased elastography quality by approximately 10 dB in both signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios.
Why the study?
Does coherent compound plane wave imaging improve elastography quality compared to conventional focus beamforming in non-invasive vascular ultrasound elastography?
Does coherent compound plane wave imaging improve elastography quality compared to conventional focus beamforming in non-invasive vascular ultrasound elastography?
Effect estimate: ~10 dB increase
Coherent compound plane wave imaging combined with a constrained Lagrangian speckle model estimator significantly improves the signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios of non-invasive vascular ultrasound elastography.
Enhances elastography metrics in animal vascular models; leaves open clinical translation for non-invasive ultrasound.
Plane strain tensor estimation using non-invasive vascular ultrasound elastography (NIVE) can be difficult to achieve using conventional focus beamforming due to limited lateral resolution and frame rate. Recent developments in compound plane wave (CPW) imaging have led to high speed and high resolution imaging. In this study, we present the performance of NIVE using coherent CPW. We show the impact of CPW beamforming on strain estimates compared to conventional focus sequences. To overcome the inherent variability of lateral strains, associated with the low lateral resolution of linear array transducers, we use the plane strain incompressibility to constrain the estimator. Taking advantage of the approximate tenfold increase in frame rate of CPW compared with conventional focus imaging, we introduce a time-ensemble estimation approach to further improve the elastogram quality. By combining CPW imaging with the constrained Lagrangian speckle model estimator, we observe an increase in elastography quality (∼ 10 dB both in signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios) over a wide range of applied strains (0.02 to 3.2%).
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Porée et al. (2015) studied Healthy (n=1). Noninvasive vascular elastography using coherent compound plane wave (CPW) imaging with constrained Lagrangian speckle model estimator vs. Conventional focus beamforming was evaluated on Elastography quality (signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios) (~10 dB increase). Combining compound plane wave imaging with a constrained Lagrangian speckle model estimator increased elastography quality by approximately 10 dB in both signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratios.
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