Abstract
High-frame rate ultrasound imaging is necessary to track fast deformation in ultrasound elasticity imaging, but the image quality may be degraded. Previously, we investigated the performance of strain imaging using numerical models of conventional and ultrafast ultrasound imaging techniques. In this paper, we performed experimental studies to quantitatively evaluate the strain images and elasticity maps obtained using conventional and high frame rate ultrasound imaging methods. The experiments were carried out using point target and tissue mimicking phantoms. The experimental results were compared with the results of numerical simulation. Our experimental studies confirm that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrastto-noise ratio (CNR), and axial/lateral resolution of the displacement and strain images acquired using high-frame rate ultrasound imaging are slightly lower but comparable with those obtained using conventional imaging. Furthermore, the quality of elasticity images also exhibits similar trends. Thus, high-frame rate ultrasound imaging can be used reliably for static elasticity imaging to capture the internal tissue motion if the frame rate is critical.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2246-2256 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue number | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 2007 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Manuscript received February 10, 2007; accepted July 6, 2007. Support in part by National Institutes of Health under grants CA 110079 and EB 004963, and Army Medical Research and Material Command under grant DAMD17-02-1-0097 is gratefully acknowledged.