A fast and quantitative measurement of shear wave speed and attenuation using (cross) modal assurance criterion for acoustic radiation force elasticity imaging

Abstract

Abstract The measurement of shear wave speed (SWS) or attenuation in soft materials, especially in biological tissues, plays a crucial role in acoustic radiation force elasticity imaging which provides a quantitative measurement of elastic properties. In this study, with the first attempt to apply modal analysis theory to acoustic radiation force elasticity imaging, we propose a fast tracking algorithm based on the modal assurance criterion (MAC) including 2D SWS-MAC for SWS measurement and the signed cross modal assurance criterion (CrossMAC) for shear wave attenuation measurement. These approaches achieved high speedup with a framework of high-level parallelism. The FEM simulation results proved the accuracy of these two approaches. Phantom experiments showed that the 2D SWS-MAC approach had good consistency in SWS estimation compared to existing approaches and could accurately preserve the boundary contour of the inclusion with narrowed assurance intervals (quarter-width assurance intervals). An excised porcine liver experiment verified the effectiveness of shear wave attenuation estimation with Signed CrossMAC. These results demonstrate that the MAC based approaches improved both the shear wave motion measurement precision and the speedup rate of the measurement compared to conventional time domain cross-correlation or time-to-peak methods.