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Hu H, Ma Y, Gao X, Song D, Li M, Huang H, Qian X, Wu R, Shi K, Ding H, Lin M, Chen X, Zhao W, Qi B, Zhou S, Chen R, Gu Y, Chen Y, Lei Y, Wang C, Wang C, Tong Y, Cui H, Abdal A, Zhu Y, Tian X, Chen Z, Lu C, Yang X, Mu J, Lou Z, Eghtedari M, Zhou Q, Oberai A, Xu S. Stretchable ultrasonic arrays for the three-dimensional mapping of the modulus of deep tissue. Nat Biomed Eng 2023; 7:1321-1334. [PMID: 37127710 DOI: 10.1038/s41551-023-01038-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2021] [Accepted: 04/05/2023] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Serial assessment of the biomechanical properties of tissues can be used to aid the early detection and management of pathophysiological conditions, to track the evolution of lesions and to evaluate the progress of rehabilitation. However, current methods are invasive, can be used only for short-term measurements, or have insufficient penetration depth or spatial resolution. Here we describe a stretchable ultrasonic array for performing serial non-invasive elastographic measurements of tissues up to 4 cm beneath the skin at a spatial resolution of 0.5 mm. The array conforms to human skin and acoustically couples with it, allowing for accurate elastographic imaging, which we validated via magnetic resonance elastography. We used the device to map three-dimensional distributions of the Young's modulus of tissues ex vivo, to detect microstructural damage in the muscles of volunteers before the onset of soreness and to monitor the dynamic recovery process of muscle injuries during physiotherapies. The technology may facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of diseases affecting tissue biomechanics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hongjie Hu
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Yuxiang Ma
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Xiaoxiang Gao
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Dawei Song
- Institute for Medicine and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Mohan Li
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Hao Huang
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Xuejun Qian
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Ray Wu
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Keren Shi
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Hong Ding
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Muyang Lin
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Xiangjun Chen
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Wenbo Zhao
- Department of Osteology and Biomechanics, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Baiyan Qi
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Sai Zhou
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Ruimin Chen
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Yue Gu
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Yimu Chen
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Yusheng Lei
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Chonghe Wang
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Chunfeng Wang
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Yitian Tong
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Haotian Cui
- Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Abdulhameed Abdal
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Yangzhi Zhu
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Xinyu Tian
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Zhaoxin Chen
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Chengchangfeng Lu
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Xinyi Yang
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Jing Mu
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Zhiyuan Lou
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Mohammad Eghtedari
- Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| | - Qifa Zhou
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Assad Oberai
- Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Sheng Xu
- Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
- Department of Nanoengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
- Department of Radiology, School of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
- Department of Bioengineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
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Gubarkova EV, Sovetsky AA, Matveev LA, Matveyev AL, Vorontsov DA, Plekhanov AA, Kuznetsov SS, Gamayunov SV, Vorontsov AY, Sirotkina MA, Gladkova ND, Zaitsev VY. Nonlinear Elasticity Assessment with Optical Coherence Elastography for High-Selectivity Differentiation of Breast Cancer Tissues. MATERIALS (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2022; 15:3308. [PMID: 35591642 PMCID: PMC9099511 DOI: 10.3390/ma15093308] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2022] [Revised: 04/27/2022] [Accepted: 05/03/2022] [Indexed: 12/05/2022]
Abstract
Soft biological tissues, breast cancer tissues in particular, often manifest pronounced nonlinear elasticity, i.e., strong dependence of their Young’s modulus on the applied stress. We showed that compression optical coherence elastography (C-OCE) is a promising tool enabling the evaluation of nonlinear properties in addition to the conventionally discussed Young’s modulus in order to improve diagnostic accuracy of elastographic examination of tumorous tissues. The aim of this study was to reveal and quantify variations in stiffness for various breast tissue components depending on the applied pressure. We discussed nonlinear elastic properties of different breast cancer samples excised from 50 patients during breast-conserving surgery. Significant differences were found among various subtypes of tumorous and nontumorous breast tissues in terms of the initial Young’s modulus (estimated for stress < 1 kPa) and the nonlinearity parameter determining the rate of stiffness increase with increasing stress. However, Young’s modulus alone or the nonlinearity parameter alone may be insufficient to differentiate some malignant breast tissue subtypes from benign. For instance, benign fibrous stroma and fibrous stroma with isolated individual cancer cells or small agglomerates of cancer cells do not yet exhibit significant difference in the Young’s modulus. Nevertheless, they can be clearly singled out by their nonlinearity parameter, which is the main novelty of the proposed OCE-based discrimination of various breast tissue subtypes. This ability of OCE is very important for finding a clean resection boundary. Overall, morphological segmentation of OCE images accounting for both linear and nonlinear elastic parameters strongly enhances the correspondence with the histological slices and radically improves the diagnostic possibilities of C-OCE for a reliable clinical outcome.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ekaterina V. Gubarkova
- Institute of Experimental Oncology and Biomedical Technologies, Privolzhsky Research Medical University, 10/1 Minin and Pozharsky Sq., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.P.); (M.A.S.); (N.D.G.)
| | - Aleksander A. Sovetsky
- Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 46 Ulyanova St., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.S.); (L.A.M.); (A.L.M.); (V.Y.Z.)
| | - Lev A. Matveev
- Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 46 Ulyanova St., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.S.); (L.A.M.); (A.L.M.); (V.Y.Z.)
| | - Aleksander L. Matveyev
- Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 46 Ulyanova St., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.S.); (L.A.M.); (A.L.M.); (V.Y.Z.)
| | - Dmitry A. Vorontsov
- Nizhny Novgorod Regional Oncologic Hospital, 11/1 Delovaya St., 603126 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (D.A.V.); (S.S.K.); (S.V.G.); (A.Y.V.)
| | - Anton A. Plekhanov
- Institute of Experimental Oncology and Biomedical Technologies, Privolzhsky Research Medical University, 10/1 Minin and Pozharsky Sq., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.P.); (M.A.S.); (N.D.G.)
| | - Sergey S. Kuznetsov
- Nizhny Novgorod Regional Oncologic Hospital, 11/1 Delovaya St., 603126 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (D.A.V.); (S.S.K.); (S.V.G.); (A.Y.V.)
- Department of Pathology, Privolzhsky Research Medical University, 10/1 Minin and Pozharsky Sq., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
| | - Sergey V. Gamayunov
- Nizhny Novgorod Regional Oncologic Hospital, 11/1 Delovaya St., 603126 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (D.A.V.); (S.S.K.); (S.V.G.); (A.Y.V.)
| | - Alexey Y. Vorontsov
- Nizhny Novgorod Regional Oncologic Hospital, 11/1 Delovaya St., 603126 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (D.A.V.); (S.S.K.); (S.V.G.); (A.Y.V.)
| | - Marina A. Sirotkina
- Institute of Experimental Oncology and Biomedical Technologies, Privolzhsky Research Medical University, 10/1 Minin and Pozharsky Sq., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.P.); (M.A.S.); (N.D.G.)
| | - Natalia D. Gladkova
- Institute of Experimental Oncology and Biomedical Technologies, Privolzhsky Research Medical University, 10/1 Minin and Pozharsky Sq., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.P.); (M.A.S.); (N.D.G.)
| | - Vladimir Y. Zaitsev
- Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 46 Ulyanova St., 603950 Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; (A.A.S.); (L.A.M.); (A.L.M.); (V.Y.Z.)
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Wang Y, Jacobson DS, Urban MW. A Non-invasive Method to Estimate the Stress-Strain Curve of Soft Tissue Using Ultrasound Elastography. ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE & BIOLOGY 2022; 48:786-807. [PMID: 35168849 PMCID: PMC8983594 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2021.12.016] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2021] [Revised: 11/16/2021] [Accepted: 12/24/2021] [Indexed: 05/03/2023]
Abstract
Ultrasound elastography performed under small strain conditions has been intensively studied. However, small deformations may be not sufficiently large to differentiate some abnormal tissues. By combining quasi-static and shear wave elastography, we developed a non-invasive method to estimate the localized stress- strain curve of materials. This method exerts progressive multistep uniaxial compression on the materials, and shear wave measurements were performed at every compression step. This method estimates the 2-D displacements between steps via a 2-D region growing motion tracking method and accumulates these displacements to obtain the large material displacements with respect to the initial configuration. At each step, the shear modulus and stress were calculated according to linear elastic theory. The proposed method was tested on custom-made tissue-mimicking phantoms. Mechanical compression testing was conducted on the samples made of the same material as the phantoms and taken as the reference. The stress-strain curves for the same material from the proposed method and from mechanical testing are in good agreement. The root mean square error (RMSE) and area percentage error (APE) of the stress-strain curve between ultrasound measurement and mechanical testing for soft materials ranged from 0.18 to 0.26 kPa and from 5.6% to 7.8%, respectively. The RMSE and APE for stiff materials ranged from 0.56 to 1.17 kPa and 8.0% to 17.9%. Therefore, our method was able to provide good estimates of the stress-strain curve for tissue-mimicking materials.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuqi Wang
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA.
| | | | - Matthew W Urban
- Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA; Department of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA
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Wang Y, Xie X, He Q, Liao H, Zhang H, Luo J. Hadamard-Encoded Synthetic Transmit Aperture Imaging for Improved Lateral Motion Estimation in Ultrasound Elastography. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL 2022; 69:1204-1218. [PMID: 35100113 DOI: 10.1109/tuffc.2022.3148332] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
Lateral motion estimation has been a challenge in ultrasound elastography mainly due to the low resolution, low sampling frequency, and lack of phase information in the lateral direction. Synthetic transmit aperture (STA) can achieve high resolution due to two-way focusing and can beamform high-density image lines for improved lateral motion estimation with the disadvantages of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and limited penetration depth. In this study, Hadamard-encoded STA (Hadamard-STA) is proposed for the improvement of lateral motion estimation in elastography, and it is compared with STA and conventional focused wave (CFW) imaging. Simulations, phantom, and in vivo experiments were conducted to make the comparison. The normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) and the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were calculated as the evaluation criteria in the simulations. The results show that, at a noise level of -10 dB and an applied strain of -1% (compression), Hadamard-STA decreases the NRMSEs of lateral displacements by 46.92% and 35.35%, decreases the NRMSEs of lateral strains by 52.34% and 39.75%, and increases the CNRs by 9.70 and 9.75 dB compared with STA and CFW, respectively. In the phantom experiments performed on a heterogeneous tissue-mimicking phantom, the sum of squared differences (SSD) between the reference and the motion-compensated RF data, and the CNR were calculated as the evaluation criteria. At an applied strain of -1.80%, Hadamard-STA is found to decrease the SSDs by 20.91% and 30.99% and increase the CNRs by 14.15 and 24.66 dB compared with STA and CFW, respectively. In the experiments performed on a breast phantom, Hadamard-STA achieves better visualization of the breast inclusion with a clearer boundary between the inclusion and the background than STA and CFW. The in vivo experiments were performed on a patient with a breast tumor, and the tumor could also be better visualized with a more homogeneous background in the strain image obtained by Hadamard-STA than by STA and CFW. These results demonstrate that Hadamard-STA achieves a substantial improvement in lateral motion estimation and maybe a competitive method for quasi-static elastography.
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Sayed AM, Naser MA, Wahba AA, Eldosoky MAA. Breast Tumor Diagnosis Using Finite-Element Modeling Based on Clinical in vivo Elastographic Data. JOURNAL OF ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE : OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE 2020; 39:2351-2363. [PMID: 32472949 DOI: 10.1002/jum.15344] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2019] [Revised: 02/21/2020] [Accepted: 04/26/2020] [Indexed: 06/11/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES This study exploited finite-element modeling (FEM) to simulate breast tissue multicompression during ultrasound elastography to classify breast tumors based on their nonlinear biomechanical properties. METHODS Numeric simulations were first calculated by using 3-dimensional (3D) virtual models with an assumed tumor's geometric dimensions but with actual material properties to test and validate the FEM. Further numeric simulations were used to construct 3D models based on in vivo experimental data to verify our models. The models were designed for each individual in vivo case, emphasizing the geometry, position, and biomechanical properties of the breast tissue. At different compression levels, tissue strains were analyzed between the tumors and the background normal tissues to explore their nonlinearity and classify the tumor type. Tumor classification parameters were deduced by using a power-law relationship between the applied compressive forces and strain differences. RESULTS Classification parameters were compared between benign and malignant tumors, for which they were found to be statistically significant in classifying the tumor types (P < .05) by both the validation and verification of FEM. We compared the classification parameters between the in vivo and FEM classifications, for which they were found to be strongly correlated (R = 0.875; P < .001), with no statistical differences between their outcomes (P = .909). CONCLUSIONS Good agreement between the model outcomes and the in vivo diagnostics was reported. The implemented models were validated and verified. The introduced 3D modeling method may augment elastographic methods to preliminary classify breast tumors at an early stage.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ahmed M Sayed
- Biomedical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Helwan University, Helwan, Egypt
| | - Mohamed A Naser
- Biomedical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia, Egypt
| | - Ashraf A Wahba
- Biomedical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Helwan University, Helwan, Egypt
| | - Mohamed A A Eldosoky
- Biomedical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Helwan University, Helwan, Egypt
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