Effects of tissue mechanical and acoustic anisotropies on the performance of a cross-correlation-based ultrasound strain imaging method

Abstract

The anisotropic mechanical properties (mechanical anisotropy) and view-dependent ultrasonic backscattering (acoustic anisotropy) of striated muscle due to the underlying myofiber arrangement have been well documented, but whether they impact on ultrasound strain imaging (USI) techniques remains unclear. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the performance of a cross-correlation-based two-dimensional (2D) USI method in anisotropic media under controlled quasi-static compression in silico and in vitro. First, synthetic pre- and post-deformed 2D radiofrequency images of anisotropic phantoms were simulated in two scenarios to examine the individual effect of the mechanical and acoustic anisotropies on strain estimation. In the first scenario, the phantom was defined to be transversely isotropic with the scatterer amplitudes following a zero-mean Gaussian distribution, while in the second scenario, the phantom was defined to be mechanically isotropic with Gaussian distributed scatterer amplitudes correlated along the principal directions of pre-defined fibers. These two anisotropies were then jointly incorporated into the ultrasound image simulation model with additional depth-dependent attenuation. Three imaging planes-the fiber plane with the fiber direction perpendicular to the ultrasound beam (TIS), the fiber plane with the fiber direction parallel to the beam (TIS), and the transverse fiber plane (TIS)-were studied. The absolute relative error (ARE) of the lateral strain estimates in TIS (20.99 ± 15.65%) was much higher than that in TIS (4.14 ± 3.17%). The ARE in TIS was unavailable owing to the large spatial extent of false peaks. The effect of tissue anisotropy on the performance of the 2D USI was further confirmed in an in vitro porcine skeletal muscle phantom. The best in-plane strain quality was again shown in TIS (elastographic signal-to-noise ratio, or SNR: >25 dB), whereas the most unreliable strain estimates were found as expected in TIS (SNR: <10 dB). The strain filter explained the effect of the mechanical anisotropy and required the underlying strain to be within an optimal range for estimation. Sonographic SNR (SNR) was found to be altered by the acoustic anisotropy and was much lower in TIS (~10 dB) than in TIS (~50 dB) in vitro, which affected the accuracy of the strain estimation. Speckle size showed no evident impact on strain estimation but requires further examination.

Imaging Heart Dynamics With Ultrafast Cascaded-Wave Ultrasound

“…The heart wall was better delineated from the CaSA image because of the SNR increase. Since the sonographic SNR is known to impact ultrasound speckle tracking [38], the proposed CaSA shows the highest quality of myocardial displacement image [ Fig. 7(c), (d) and (g), (h)] than that of SA and H-SA ones.…”

“…An in-house RF-based speckle tracking method based on cross correlation with a 2-D matching kernel was employed to estimate the axial displacement of the myocardium [37], [38]. Spline interpolation was first performed between RF signals in the postdisplaced frame to increase lateral sampling.…”

“…6(d Fig. 7 shows the images of axial displacements estimated by our in-house RF speckle tracking technique [37], [38] from RF frames of the same human myocardium shown in Fig. 6 reconstructed by SA, H-SA, and CaSA methods.…”