Abstract
We have developed the ultrasonic (US) strain measurement-based elasticity computed tomography for diagnosis of soft tissues. Specifically, we developed the iterative rf-echo phase matching method that provides us considerably accurate estimates of strains generated in vivo in soft tissues due to spontaneous heart motion/extracorporeally applied pressures. Moreover, we have developed a numerical method for stably reconstructing the relative shear modulus distribution with respect to reference shear moduli only from the measured strain data. We also developed the proper configuration method of mechanical sources/reference regions for stably reconstructing it. Since we could verify the feasibility of each method through simulations, and phantom experiments etc, we here focused our attention on application to breast tissues, and unified the methods into a technique by conducting experiments using in vitro pork rib. Finally, we showed a sample shear modulus image obtained on the breast tissue of a healthy volunteer.
