Time-resolved pulsed elastography with ultrafast ultrasonic imaging

Abstract

In this paper, a new elastographic method is proposed. Using this method, the propagation of a low-frequency transient shear wave can be imaged by means of an ultrafast imaging system (up to 10,000 frames/s) that we have developed. Ultrafast ultrasonic imaging is obtained with a linear array of transducers (3.5 MHz) connected to electronics that have 64 channels sampled at 30 MHz and 128 Kbytes for storing the backscattered signals. Displacements are measured using cross-correlation of the ultrasonic signals. Movies of the low central frequency (200 Hz) shear wave propagation through homogeneous and heterogeneous phantoms have been obtained with 1,000 and 2,000 frames per second.