IMAGING OF THE ELASTIC PROPERTIES OF TISSUE - A REVIEW

Recently, a number of methods have been developed that make it possibl e to image the elastic properties of soft tissues, Because certain typ es of tissues such as malignant lesions, for example, have elastic pro perties that are markedly different from surrounding tissues, elastici ty imaging could provide a significant adjunct to current diagnostic u ltrasonic methods, Further, elasticity imaging techniques could be use d to augment the study of tissues that change their elastic properties , such as skeletal and cardiac muscle, In this paper, we survey some o f the previous work done in the related field of biomechanics, and we review measurement techniques from the 1950s to the 1980s, Different a pproaches to elastic imaging and signal processing are then discussed and a lexicography for elastic imaging is introduced, It is hoped that this nomenclature will provide a meaningful categorization of various approaches and will make evident the inherent parameters displayed an d conditions applied in deriving the resulting images, Key assumptions and signal processing approaches are also reviewed, Finally, directio ns for future work are suggested. Copyright (C) 1996 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology