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Wu H, Huang X, Guo X, Wen Z, Qin J. Cross-Image Dependency Modeling for Breast Ultrasound Segmentation. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2023; 42:1619-1631. [PMID: 37018315 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2022.3233648] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/02/2023]
Abstract
We present a novel deep network (namely BUSSeg) equipped with both within- and cross-image long-range dependency modeling for automated lesions segmentation from breast ultrasound images, which is a quite daunting task due to (1) the large variation of breast lesions, (2) the ambiguous lesion boundaries, and (3) the existence of speckle noise and artifacts in ultrasound images. Our work is motivated by the fact that most existing methods only focus on modeling the within-image dependencies while neglecting the cross-image dependencies, which are essential for this task under limited training data and noise. We first propose a novel cross-image dependency module (CDM) with a cross-image contextual modeling scheme and a cross-image dependency loss (CDL) to capture more consistent feature expression and alleviate noise interference. Compared with existing cross-image methods, the proposed CDM has two merits. First, we utilize more complete spatial features instead of commonly used discrete pixel vectors to capture the semantic dependencies between images, mitigating the negative effects of speckle noise and making the acquired features more representative. Second, the proposed CDM includes both intra- and inter-class contextual modeling rather than just extracting homogeneous contextual dependencies. Furthermore, we develop a parallel bi-encoder architecture (PBA) to tame a Transformer and a convolutional neural network to enhance BUSSeg's capability in capturing within-image long-range dependencies and hence offer richer features for CDM. We conducted extensive experiments on two representative public breast ultrasound datasets, and the results demonstrate that the proposed BUSSeg consistently outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in most metrics.
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Haspolat M, Sakızlı Erdal E, Erturk B, Erpolat OP, Keser I. Acute Effects of Manual Lymphatic Drainage and Compression with Exercise Therapy on Breast Lymphedema Following Breast-Conserving Surgery and Radiotherapy. Lymphat Res Biol 2022. [DOI: 10.1089/lrb.2022.0037] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Miray Haspolat
- Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Health Sciences, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Elif Sakızlı Erdal
- Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Health Sciences, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Burak Erturk
- Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Health Sciences, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Ozge Petek Erpolat
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
| | - Ilke Keser
- Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Health Sciences, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
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Sanderson J, Tuttle N, Laakso L. Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse Elastography Assessment of Lymphoedema Tissue: An Insight into Tissue Stiffness. Cancers (Basel) 2022; 14:cancers14215281. [PMID: 36358699 PMCID: PMC9656697 DOI: 10.3390/cancers14215281] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2022] [Revised: 10/21/2022] [Accepted: 10/26/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Palpation remains essential for evaluating lymphoedema to detect subtle changes that may indicate progression. As palpation sense is not quantifiable, this study investigates the utility of ultrasound elastography to quantify stiffness of lymphoedema tissue and explore the influence of the pitting test on tissue stiffness. Fifteen women with unilateral arm lymphoedema were scanned using a Siemens S3000 Acuson ultrasound (Siemens, Germany) with 18 MHz and 9 MHz linear transducers to assess tissue structure and tissue stiffness with Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse elastography. Ninety sites were assessed, three on each of the lymphoedema-affected and contralateral unaffected arms. A subgroup of seven lymphoedema-affected sites included additional elastography imaging after a 60-s pitting test. Dermal tissue stiffness was greater than subcutaneous tissue stiffness regardless of the presence of pathology (p < 0.001). Lymphoedematous tissue exhibited a higher dermal to subcutaneous tissue stiffness ratio than contralateral sites (p = 0.005). Subgroup analysis indicated that the pitting test reduces dermal tissue stiffness (p = 0.018) and may alter the stiffness of the subcutaneous tissue layer. Elastography demonstrates potential as a complement to lymphoedema palpation assessment. The novel pre-test and post-pitting elastography imaging protocol yielded information representative of lymphoedema tissue characteristics that could not be ascertained from pre-test elastography images alone.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer Sanderson
- School of Allied Health and Social Work, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD 4215, Australia
- Correspondence:
| | - Neil Tuttle
- School of Allied Health and Social Work, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD 4215, Australia
- School of Health Sciences, University of Tasmania, Newham, TAS 7005, Australia
| | - Liisa Laakso
- School of Allied Health and Social Work, Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD 4215, Australia
- Mater Research Institute, The University of Queensland, South Brisbane, QLD 4101, Australia
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Khan MHR, Righetti R. Ultrasound estimation of strain time constant and vascular permeability in tumors using a CEEMDAN and linear regression-based method. Comput Biol Med 2022; 148:105707. [PMID: 35725503 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105707] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/07/2022] [Revised: 05/12/2022] [Accepted: 06/04/2022] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
Abstract
Ultrasound poroelastography focuses on the estimation of the spatio-temporal mechanical behavior of tissues using data often corrupted with non-stationary noise. The cumulative strain calculated from prolonged temporal acquisition of RF data can face the problem of aggregate noise. This noise can significantly affect the accuracy of curve fitting techniques necessary to estimate the clinically significant strain Time Constant (TC) and related parameters. We present a new technique, which decomposes the non-linear temporal behavior of the differential strain to extract the monotonic decaying trend by using the time-domain and data-driven Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition with Adaptive Noise (CEEMDAN) algorithm. A linear regression scheme is then used to obtain the slope of the transformed non-linear trend, which carries information about the strain TC. Assessment of Vascular Permeability (VP), a transport parameter indicative of tumor growth, requires accurate strain TC estimations. Finite Element (FE), ultrasound simulations and in vivo experiments are used to investigate the performance of the proposed technique. Based on the simulation analysis, the average Percentage Relative Error (PRE) values of our method are 4.15% (for TC estimation) and 5.00% (for VP estimation) at 20 dB SNR level for different Percentage of Good Frames (PGF) (i.e., 20%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). These PRE values are substantially lower than those obtained using other conventional elastographic techniques. Our proposed method could become a new data-adaptive tool for analyzing the non-linear time-dependent response of complex tissues such as cancers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Hadiur Rahman Khan
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77843, TX, USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77843, TX, USA.
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Majumder S, Islam MT, Righetti R. Estimation of Mechanical and Transport Parameters in Cancers Using Short Time Poroelastography. IEEE JOURNAL OF TRANSLATIONAL ENGINEERING IN HEALTH AND MEDICINE 2022; 10:1900411. [PMID: 36147877 PMCID: PMC9484738 DOI: 10.1109/jtehm.2022.3198316] [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: 12/17/2021] [Revised: 04/03/2022] [Accepted: 07/21/2022] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
Mechanical and transport properties of cancers such as Young's modulus (YM), Poisson's ratio (PR), and vascular permeability (VP) have great clinical importance in cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. However, non-invasive estimation of these parameters in vivo is challenged by many practical factors. Elasticity imaging methods, such as "poroelastography", require prolonged data acquisition, which can limit their clinical applicability. In this paper, we investigate a new method to perform poroelastography experiments, which results in shorter temporal acquisition windows. This method is referred to as "short-time poroelastography" (STPE). Finite element (FE) and ultrasound simulations demonstrate that, using STPE, it is possible to accurately estimate YM, PR (within 10% error) using windows of observation (WoOs) of length as short as 1 underlying strain Time Constant (TC). The error was found to be almost negligible (< 3%) when using WoOs longer than 2 strain TCs. In the case of VP estimation, WoOs of at least 2 strain TCs are required to obtain an error < 8% (in simulations). The stricter requirement for the estimation of VP with respect to YM and PR is due its reliance on the transient strain behavior while YM and PR depend on the steady state strain values only. In vivo experimental data are used as a proof-of-principle of the potential applicability of the proposed methodology in vivo. The use of STPE may provide a means to efficiently perform poroelastography experiments without compromising the accuracy of the estimated tissue properties.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sharmin Majumder
- Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringTexas A&M University College Station TX 77843 USA
| | - Md Tauhidul Islam
- Department of Radiation OncologyStanford University Stanford CA 94305 USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringTexas A&M University College Station TX 77843 USA
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Lilaj L, Fischer T, Guo J, Braun J, Sack I, Hirsch S. Separation of fluid and solid shear wave fields and quantification of coupling density by magnetic resonance poroelastography. Magn Reson Med 2020; 85:1655-1668. [PMID: 32902011 DOI: 10.1002/mrm.28507] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2020] [Revised: 08/14/2020] [Accepted: 08/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
PURPOSE Biological soft tissues often have a porous architecture comprising fluid and solid compartments. Upon displacement through physiological or externally induced motion, the relative motion of these compartments depends on poroelastic parameters, such as coupling density ( ρ 12 ) and tissue porosity. This study introduces inversion recovery MR elastography (IR-MRE) (1) to quantify porosity defined as fluid volume over total volume, (2) to separate externally induced shear strain fields of fluid and solid compartments, and (3) to quantify coupling density assuming a biphasic behavior of in vivo brain tissue. THEORY AND METHODS Porosity was measured in eight tofu phantoms and gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) of 21 healthy volunteers. Porosity of tofu was compared to values obtained by fluid draining and microscopy. Solid and fluid shear-strain amplitudes and ρ 12 were estimated both in phantoms and in in vivo brain. RESULTS T1 -based measurement of tofu porosity agreed well with reference values (R = 0.99, P < .01). Brain tissue porosity was 0.14 ± 0.02 in GM and 0.05 ± 0.01 in WM (P < .001). Fluid shear strain was found to be phase-locked with solid shear strain but had lower amplitudes in both tofu phantoms and brain tissue (P < .05). In accordance with theory, tofu and brain ρ 12 were negative. CONCLUSION IR-MRE allowed for the first time separation of shear strain fields of solid and fluid compartments for measuring coupling density according to the biphasic theory of poroelasticity. Thus, IR-MRE opens horizons for poroelastography-derived imaging markers that can be used in basic research and diagnostic applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ledia Lilaj
- Department of Radiology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Thomas Fischer
- Department of Radiology, Interdisciplinary Ultrasound Center, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Jing Guo
- Department of Radiology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Jürgen Braun
- Institute of Medical Informatics, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ingolf Sack
- Department of Radiology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Sebastian Hirsch
- Berlin Center for Advanced Neuroimaging, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.,Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany
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Islam MT, Tasciotti E, Righetti R. Non-Invasive Imaging of Normalized Solid Stress in Cancers in Vivo. IEEE JOURNAL OF TRANSLATIONAL ENGINEERING IN HEALTH AND MEDICINE-JTEHM 2019; 7:4300209. [PMID: 32309062 PMCID: PMC6822636 DOI: 10.1109/jtehm.2019.2932059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2018] [Revised: 05/27/2019] [Accepted: 07/25/2019] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
The solid stress (SSg) that develops inside a cancer is an important marker of cancer’s growth, invasion and metastasis. Currently, there are no non-invasive methods to image SSg inside tumors. In this paper, we develop a new, non-invasive and cost-effective imaging method to assess SSg inside tumors that uses ultrasound poroelastography. Center to the proposed method is a novel analytical model, which demonstrates that SSg and the compression-induced stress (SSc) that generates inside the cancer in a poroelastography experiment have the same spatial distribution. To show the clinical feasibility of the proposed technique, we imaged and analyzed the normalized SSg inside treated and untreated human breast cancers in a small animal model. Given the clinical significance of assessing SSg in cancers and the advantages of the proposed ultrasonic methods, our technique could have a great impact on cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment methods.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Tauhidul Islam
- 1Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringTexas A&M UniversityCollege StationTX77843USA
| | - Ennio Tasciotti
- 2Center of Biomimetic MedicineHouston Methodist Research InstituteHoustonTX77030USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- 1Department of Electrical and Computer EngineeringTexas A&M UniversityCollege StationTX77843USA
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Islam MT, Tasciotti E, Righetti R. Estimation of Vascular Permeability in Irregularly Shaped Cancers Using Ultrasound Poroelastography. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 2019; 67:1083-1096. [PMID: 31331877 DOI: 10.1109/tbme.2019.2929134] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE Vascular permeability (VP) is a mechanical parameter which plays an important role in cancer initiation, metastasis, and progression. To date, there are only a few non-invasive methods that can be used to image VP in solid tumors. Most of these methods require the use of contrast agents and are expensive, limiting widespread use. METHODS In this paper, we propose a new method to image VP in tumors, which is based on the use of ultrasound poroelastography. Estimation of VP by poroelastography requires knowledge of the Young's modulus (YM), Poisson's ratio (PR), and strain time constant (TC) in the tumors. In our method, we find the ellipse which best fits the tumor (regardless of its shape) using an eigen-system-based fitting technique and estimate the YM and PR using Eshelby's elliptic inclusion formulation. A Fourier method is used to estimate the axial strain TC, which does not require any initial guess and is highly robust to noise. RESULTS It is demonstrated that the proposed method can estimate VP in irregularly shaped tumors with an accuracy of above [Formula: see text] using ultrasound simulation data with signal-to-noise ratio of 20 dB or higher. In vivo feasibility of the proposed technique is demonstrated in an orthotopic mouse model of breast cancer. CONCLUSION The proposed imaging method can provide accurate and localized estimation of VP in cancers non-invasively and cost-effectively. SIGNIFICANCE Accurate and non-invasive assessment of VP can have a significant impact on diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cancers.
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Islam MT, Righetti R. Estimation of mechanical parameters in cancers by empirical orthogonal function analysis of poroelastography data. Comput Biol Med 2019; 111:103343. [PMID: 31279980 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2019.103343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2018] [Revised: 05/24/2019] [Accepted: 06/24/2019] [Indexed: 10/26/2022]
Abstract
Ultrasound poroelastography is a non-invasive imaging modality that has been shown to be capable of estimating mechanical parameters such as Young's modulus (YM), Poisson's ratio (PR) and vascular permeability (VP) in cancers. However, experimental poroelastographic data are inherently noisy because of the requirement of relatively long temporal data acquisitions often in hand-held mode conditions. In this paper, we propose a new method, which allows accurate estimation of YM and PR from denoised steady state axial and lateral strains by empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis of poroelastographic data. The method also allows estimation of VP from the time constant (TC) of the first expansion coefficient (EC) of the temporal axial strain, which has larger dynamic range and lower noise in comparison to the actual temporal axial strain curve. We validated our technique through finite element (FE) and ultrasound simulations and tested the in vivo feasibility in experimental data obtained from a cancer animal model. The percent relative errors (PRE) in the estimation of YM, PR and VP using the EOF analysis as applied to ultrasound simulation data were 3.27%, 3.10%, 14.22%, respectively (at SNR of 20 dB). Based on the high level of accuracy by EOF analysis, the proposed technique may become a useful signal processing technique for applications focusing on the estimation of the mechanical behavior of cancers.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Tauhidul Islam
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77840, USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77840, USA.
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Erdogan Iyigun Z, Agacayak F, Ilgun AS, Elbuken Celebi F, Ordu C, Alco G, Ozturk A, Duymaz T, Aktepe F, Ozmen V. The Role of Elastography in Diagnosis and Staging of Breast Cancer-Related Lymphedema. Lymphat Res Biol 2019; 17:334-339. [DOI: 10.1089/lrb.2018.0012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Zeynep Erdogan Iyigun
- Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul Bilim University, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Filiz Agacayak
- Department of Radiology, Istanbul Florence Nightingale Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Ahmet Serkan Ilgun
- Department of General Surgery, Gaziosmanpaşa Taksim Education and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Filiz Elbuken Celebi
- Department of Radiology, Istanbul Florence Nightingale Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Cetin Ordu
- Department of Oncology and Gayrettepe Florence Nightingale Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Gul Alco
- Department of Radiation Oncology, Gayrettepe Florence Nightingale Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Alper Ozturk
- Department of General Surgery, Biruni University Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Tomris Duymaz
- Physiotheraphy and Rehabilitation School, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Fatma Aktepe
- Department of Pathology, Gayrettepe Florence Nightingale Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
| | - Vahit Ozmen
- Department of Breast Surgery, Istanbul Florence Nightingale Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
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Islam MT, Chaudhry A, Righetti R. A Robust Method to Estimate the Time Constant of Elastographic Parameters. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2019; 38:1358-1370. [PMID: 30703014 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2019.2894782] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
Novel viscoelastic and poroelastic elastography techniques rely on the accurate estimation of the temporal behavior of the axial or lateral strains and related parameters. From the temporal curve of the elastographic parameter of interest, the time constant (TC) is estimated using analytical models and curve-fitting techniques such as Levenberg-Marquardt (LM), Nelder-Mead (NM), and trust-region reflective (TR). In this paper, we propose a new technique named variable projection (VP) to estimate accurately and robustly the TC and steady-state value of the elastographic parameter of interest from its temporal curve. As a testing platform, the method is used with a novel analytical model, which can be used for both poroelastic and viscoelastic tissues and in most practical experimental conditions of clinical interest. Finite element and ultrasound simulations and experimental results demonstrate that VP is robust to noise and capable of estimating the TC of the elastographic parameter with accuracy higher than that of typically employed curve-fitting techniques. The results also demonstrate that the performance of VP is not affected by an incorrect initial TC guess. For example, in simulations, VP can estimate the TC of axial strain and effective Poisson's ratio accurately for initial guesses ranging from 0.001 to infinite times of the true TC value even in fairly noisy conditions (30-dB signal to noise ratio). In experiments, VP always estimates the axial strain TC reliably, whereas the LM, NM, and TR methods fail to converge or converge to wrong solutions in most of the cases.
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12
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An analytical poroelastic model of a spherical tumor embedded in normal tissue under creep compression. J Biomech 2019; 89:48-56. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2019.04.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2018] [Revised: 04/05/2019] [Accepted: 04/07/2019] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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Hashemi HS, Fallone S, Boily M, Towers A, Kilgour RD, Rivaz H. Assessment of Mechanical Properties of Tissue in Breast Cancer-Related Lymphedema Using Ultrasound Elastography. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ULTRASONICS, FERROELECTRICS, AND FREQUENCY CONTROL 2019; 66:541-550. [PMID: 30334756 DOI: 10.1109/tuffc.2018.2876056] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
Breast cancer-related lymphedema is a consequence of a malfunctioning lymphatic drainage system resulting from surgery or some other form of treatment. In the initial stages, minor and reversible increases in the fluid volume of the arm are evident. As the stages progress over time, the underlying pathophysiology dramatically changes with an irreversible increase in arm volume most likely due to a chronic local inflammation leading to adipose tissue hypertrophy and fibrosis. Clinicians have subjective ways to stage the degree and severity such as the pitting test which entails manually comparing the elasticity of the affected and unaffected arms. Several imaging modalities can be used but ultrasound appears to be the most preferred because it is affordable, safe, and portable. Unfortunately, ultrasonography is not typically used for staging lymphedema, because the appearance of the affected and unaffected arms is similar in B-mode ultrasound images. However, novel ultrasound techniques have emerged, such as elastography, which may be able to identify changes in mechanical properties of the tissue related to detection and staging of lymphedema. This paper presents a novel technique to compare the mechanical properties of the affected and unaffected arms using quasi-static ultrasound elastography to provide an objective alternative to the current subjective assessment. Elastography is based on time delay estimation (TDE) from ultrasound images to infer displacement and mechanical properties of the tissue. We further introduce a novel method for TDE by incorporating higher order derivatives of the ultrasound data into a cost function and propose a novel optimization approach to efficiently minimize the cost function. This method works reliably with our challenging patient data. We collected radio frequency ultrasound data from both arms of seven patients with stage 2 lymphedema, at six different locations in each arm. The ratio of strain in skin, subcutaneous fat, and skeletal muscle divided by strain in the standoff gel pad was calculated in the unaffected and affected arms. The p -values using a Wilcoxon sign-rank test for the skin, subcutaneous fat, and skeletal muscle were 1.24×10-5 , 1.77×10-8 , and 8.11×10-7 respectively, showing differences between the unaffected and affected arms with a very high level of significance.
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Tang S, Sabonghy EP, Chaudhry A, Shajudeen PS, Islam MT, Kim N, Cabrera FJ, Reddy JN, Tasciotti E, Righetti R. A Model-Based Approach to Investigate the Effect of a Long Bone Fracture on Ultrasound Strain Elastography. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2018; 37:1178-1191. [PMID: 29994472 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2018.2792437] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
The mechanical behavior of long bones and fractures has been under investigation for many decades due to its complexity and clinical relevance. In this paper, we report a new subject-specific methodology to predict and analyze the mechanical behavior of the soft tissue at a bone interface with the intent of identifying the presence and location of bone abnormalities with high accuracy, spatial resolution, and contrast. The proposed methodology was tested on both intact and fractured rabbit femur samples with finite element-based 3-D simulations, created from actual femur computed tomography data, and ultrasound elastography experiments. The results included in this study demonstrate that elastographic strains at the bone/soft tissue interface can be used to differentiate fractured femurs from the intact ones on a distribution level. These results also demonstrate that coronal plane axial shear strain creates a unique contrast mechanism that can be used to reliably detect fractures (both complete and incomplete) in long bones. Kruskal-Wallis test further demonstrates that the contrast measure for the fracture group (simulation: 2.1286±0.2206; experiment: 2.7034 ± 1.0672) is significantly different from that for the intact group (simulation: 0 ± 0; experiment: 1.1540±0.6909) when using coronal plane axial shear strain elastography ( < 0.01). We conclude that: 1) elastography techniques can be used to accurately identify the presence and location of fractures in a long bone and 2) the proposed model-based approach can be used to predict and analyze strains at a bone fracture site and to better interpret experimental elastographic data.
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15
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Aslan H, Analan PD, Kaya E. : Is there a correlation between the biceps brachii muscle stiffness measured by elastography and severity of lymphedema in patients with breast cancer-related lymphedema? ARCHIVES OF CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE 2018. [DOI: 10.25000/acem.432532] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
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16
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Islam MT, Reddy JN, Righetti R. A model-based approach to investigate the effect of elevated interstitial fluid pressure on strain elastography. Phys Med Biol 2018; 63:215011. [PMID: 30353890 DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/aae572] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/04/2023]
Abstract
Finite element (FE) modeling provides a useful tool to understand the mechanical behavior of complex tissues, such as cancers, in a variety of testing conditions. Although a number of numerical and analytical models for cancerous tumors are retrievable in the literature, none of these models is capable of completely describing the behavior of a cancer embedded in a normal tissue in the conditions typical for an ultrasound elastography experiment. In this paper, we first design and implement a realistic FE model of the mechanical behavior of a cancer embedded in a normal tissue under ultrasound elastography testing conditions. In addition to the commonly used tissue mechanical properties, for the cancer, elevated interstitial fluid pressure (IFP) is incorporated in the model. IFP is a parameter of great clinical significance, but it is not typically considered in elastographic models of tumors. The developed model is then used to thoroughly study the effect of IFP on the axial, lateral and volumetric strains inside the tumor. The results of this study demonstrate that the presence of the IFP affects both the temporal and spatial distributions of the axial, lateral, volumetric strains and related elastographic parameters. Thus, these results lead to two important considerations: (1) that a correct interpretation of experimental elastographic data need a clear understanding of the effect of the IFP on the obtained elastograms and (2) that this IFP-dependent alteration of the elastographic parameters may provide an opportunity to non-invasively gain localized information about this clinically relevant parameter.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Tauhidul Islam
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77840, United States of America
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Islam MT, Righetti R. A novel filter for accurate estimation of fluid pressure and fluid velocity using poroelastography. Comput Biol Med 2018; 101:90-99. [PMID: 30121497 DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2018.08.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2018] [Revised: 08/03/2018] [Accepted: 08/04/2018] [Indexed: 12/11/2022]
Abstract
Fluid pressure and fluid velocity carry important information for cancer diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. Recent work has demonstrated that estimation of these parameters is theoretically possible using ultrasound poroelastography. However, accurate estimation of these parameters requires high quality axial and lateral strain estimates from noisy ultrasound radio frequency (RF) data. In this paper, we propose a filtering technique combining two efficient filters for removal of noise from strain images, i.e., Kalman and nonlinear complex diffusion filters (NCDF). Our proposed filter is based on a novel noise model, which takes into consideration both additive and amplitude modulation noise in the estimated strains. Using finite element and ultrasound simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed filtering technique can significantly improve image quality of lateral strain elastograms along with fluid pressure and velocity elastograms. Technical feasibility of the proposed method on an in vivo set of data is also demonstrated. Our results show that the CNRe of the lateral strain, fluid pressure and fluid velocity as estimated using the proposed technique is higher by at least 10.9%, 51.3% and 334.4% when compared to the results obtained using a Kalman filter only, by at least 8.9%, 27.6% and 219.5% when compared to the results obtained using a NCDF only and by at least 152.3%, 1278% and 742% when compared to the results obtained using a median filter only for all SNRs considered in this study.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Tauhidul Islam
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77840, Texas, USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77840, Texas, USA.
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Islam MT, Reddy JN, Righetti R. An analytical poroelastic model of a non-homogeneous medium under creep compression for ultrasound poroelastography applications - Part II. J Biomech Eng 2018; 141:2686531. [PMID: 30029209 DOI: 10.1115/1.4040604] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2017] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
An analytical theory for the unconfined creep behavior of a cylindrical inclusion (simulating a soft tissue tumor) embedded in a cylindrical background sample (simulating normal tissue) is presented and analyzed in this paper. Both the inclusion and the background are considered as fluid-filled, porous materials, each of them being characterized by a set of mechanical parameters. Specifically, in this derivation, the inclusion is assumed to have significantly higher interstitial permeability than the background. The formulations of the effective Poisson's ratio (EPR) and fluid pressure in the inclusion and in the background are derived for the case of a sample subjected to a creep compression. The developed analytical expressions are validated using finite element models (FEM). Statistical comparison between the results obtained from the developed model and the results from FEM demonstrates accuracy of the proposed theoretical model higher than 99.4%. The model presented in this paper complements the one reported in the companion paper (Part I), which refers to the case of an inclusion having less interstitial permeability than the background.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Tauhidul Islam
- Graduate Research Assistant, Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA-77840
| | - J N Reddy
- Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA-77840
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Associate Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA-77840
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19
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Islam MT, Reddy JN, Righetti R. An analytical poroelastic model of a non-homogeneous medium under creep compression for ultrasound poroelastography applications - Part I. J Biomech Eng 2018; 141:2686530. [PMID: 30029267 DOI: 10.1115/1.4040603] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/27/2017] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
An analytical theory for the unconfined creep behavior of a cylindrical inclusion (simulating a soft tissue tumor) embedded in a cylindrical background sample (simulating normal tissue) is presented and analyzed in this paper. Both the inclusion and the background are considered as fluid-filled, porous materials, each of them being characterized by a set of mechanical properties. Specifically, in this paper, the inclusion is considered to be less permeable than the background. The cylindrical sample is compressed using a constant pressure within two frictionless plates and is allowed to expand in an unconfined way along the radial direction. Analytical expressions for the effective Poisson's ratio (EPR) and fluid pressure inside and outside the inclusion are derived and analyzed. The theoretical results are validated using finite element models (FEM). Statistical analysis shows excellent agreement between the results obtained from the developed model and the results from FEM. Thus the developed theoretical model can be used in medical imaging modalities such as ultrasound poroelastography to extract the mechanical parameters of tissues and/or to better understand the impact of the different mechanical parameters on the estimated displacements, strains, stresses and fluid pressure inside a tumor and in the surrounding tissue.
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Affiliation(s)
- Md Tauhidul Islam
- Graduate Research Assistant, Ultrasound and Elasticity Imaging Laboratory, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA-77840
| | - J N Reddy
- Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA-77840
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Associate Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA-77840
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20
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Uff C, Garcia L, Fromageau J, Chakraborty A, Dorward N, Bamber J. Further characterization of changes in axial strain elastograms due to the presence of slippery tumor boundaries. J Med Imaging (Bellingham) 2018; 5:021211. [PMID: 29430480 PMCID: PMC5798943 DOI: 10.1117/1.jmi.5.2.021211] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/08/2017] [Accepted: 01/04/2018] [Indexed: 01/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Elastography measures tissue strain, which can be interpreted under certain simplifying assumptions to be representative of the underlying stiffness distribution. This is useful in cancer diagnosis where tumors tend to have a different stiffness to healthy tissue and has also shown potential to provide indication of the degree of bonding at tumor-tissue boundaries, which is clinically useful because of its dependence on tumor pathology. We consider the changes in axial strain for the case of a symmetrical model undergoing uniaxial compression, studied by characterizing changes in tumor contrast transfer efficiency (CTE), inclusion to background strain contrast and strain contrast generated by slip motion, as a function of Young's modulus contrast and applied strain. We present results from a finite element simulation and an evaluation of these results using tissue-mimicking phantoms. The simulation results show that a discontinuity in displacement data at the tumor boundary, caused by the surrounding tissue slipping past the tumor, creates a halo of "pseudostrain" across the tumor boundary. Mobile tumors also appear stiffer on elastograms than adhered tumors, to the extent that tumors that have the same Young's modulus as the background may in fact be visible as low-strain regions, or those that are softer than the background may appear to be stiffer than the background. Tumor mobility also causes characteristic strain heterogeneity within the tumor, which exhibits low strain close to the slippery boundary and increasing strain toward the center of the tumor. These results were reproduced in phantom experiments. In addition, phantom experiments demonstrated that when fluid lubrication is present at the boundary, these effects become applied strain-dependent as well as modulus-dependent, in a systematic and characteristic manner. The knowledge generated by this study is expected to aid interpretation of clinical strain elastograms by helping to avoid misinterpretation as well as provide additional diagnostic criteria stated in the paper and stimulate further research into the application of elastography to tumor mobility assessment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher Uff
- Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Joint Department of Physics, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom
| | - Leo Garcia
- Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Joint Department of Physics, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom
| | - Jeremie Fromageau
- Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Joint Department of Physics, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom
| | - Aabir Chakraborty
- Southampton General Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Southampton, United Kingdom
| | - Neil Dorward
- National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Victor Horsley Department of Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London, United Kingdom
| | - Jeffrey Bamber
- Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Joint Department of Physics, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom
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Islam MT, Chaudhry A, Unnikrishnan G, Reddy JN, Righetti R. An analytical poroelastic model for ultrasound elastography imaging of tumors. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2018; 63:025031. [DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/aa9631] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
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22
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Wang H, Nieskoski MD, Marra K, Gunn JR, Trembly SB, Pogue BW, Doyley MM. Elastographic Assessment of Xenograft Pancreatic Tumors. ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE & BIOLOGY 2017; 43:2891-2903. [PMID: 28964615 PMCID: PMC5693710 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2017.08.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/28/2017] [Revised: 08/01/2017] [Accepted: 08/09/2017] [Indexed: 05/04/2023]
Abstract
High tissue pressures prevent chemotherapeutics from reaching the parenchyma of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, which makes it difficult to treat this aggressive disease. Researchers currently use invasive probes to monitor the effectiveness of pressure-reducing therapies, but this practice introduces additional complications. Here, we hypothesize that Young's modulus is a good surrogate for tissue pressure because collagen density and hyaluoronic acid, the key features of the tumor microenvironment responsible for high tissue pressures, also affect modulus elastograms. To corroborate this hypothesis, we used model-based quasi-static elastography to assess how the Young's modulus of naturally occurring AsPc-1 pancreatic tumors varies with collagen density and hyaluoronic acid concentration. We observed that Young's moduli of orthotopically grown xenograft tumors were 6 kPa (p < 0.05) higher than that of their subcutaneously grown counterparts. We also observed a strong correlation between Young's modulus and regions within the tumors with high collagen (R2 ≈ 0.8) and hyaluoronic acid (R2 ≈ 0.6) densities. These preliminary results indicate that hyaluronic acid and collagen density, features of the pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma tumor microenvironment responsible for high tissue pressure, influence Young's modulus.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hexuan Wang
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
| | - Michael D Nieskoski
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
| | - Kayla Marra
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
| | - Jason R Gunn
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
| | - Stuart B Trembly
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
| | - Brian W Pogue
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
| | - Marvin M Doyley
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA.
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Yang X, Torres M, Kirkpatrick S, Curran WJ, Liu T. Ultrasound 2D strain measurement for arm lymphedema using deformable registration: A feasibility study. PLoS One 2017; 12:e0181250. [PMID: 28854199 PMCID: PMC5576739 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181250] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2017] [Accepted: 06/28/2017] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Purpose Lymphedema, a swelling of the extremity, is a debilitating morbidity of cancer treatment. Current clinical evaluation of lymphedema is often based on medical history and physical examinations, which is subjective. In this paper, the authors report an objective, quantitative 2D strain imaging approach using a hybrid deformable registration to measure soft-tissue stiffness and assess the severity of lymphedema. Methods The authors have developed a new 2D strain imaging method using registration of pre- and post-compression ultrasound B-mode images, which combines the statistical intensity- and structure-based similarity measures using normalized mutual information (NMI) metric and normalized sum-of-squared-differences (NSSD), with an affine-based global and B-spline-based local transformation model. This 2D strain method was tested through a series of experiments using elastography phantom under various pressures. Clinical feasibility was tested with four participants: two patients with arm lymphedema following breast-cancer radiotherapy and two healthy volunteers. Results The phantom experiments have shown that the proposed registration-based strain method significantly increased the signal-to-noise and contrast-to-noise ratio under various pressures as compared with the commonly used cross-correlation-based elastography method. In the pilot study, the strain images were successfully generated for all participants. The averaged strain values of the lymphedema affected arms were much higher than those of the normal arms. Conclusions The authors have developed a deformable registration-based 2D strain method for the evaluation of arm lymphedema. The initial findings are encouraging and a large clinical study is warranted to further evaluate this 2D ultrasound strain imaging technology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaofeng Yang
- Radiation Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
- * E-mail: (XY); (TL)
| | - Mylin Torres
- Radiation Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
| | - Stephanie Kirkpatrick
- Radiation Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
| | - Walter J. Curran
- Radiation Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
| | - Tian Liu
- Radiation Oncology and Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States of America
- * E-mail: (XY); (TL)
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Galaz BA, Acevedo RH. Optimization of a Pixel-to-Pixel Curve-Fitting Method for Poroelastography Imaging. ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE & BIOLOGY 2017; 43:309-322. [PMID: 27765386 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2016.09.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/10/2016] [Revised: 08/31/2016] [Accepted: 09/06/2016] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
Ultrasound poroelastography is an imaging modality used to characterize the temporal behavior of soft tissue that can be modeled as a solid permeated by interconnected pores filled with liquid (poroelastic medium). It could be useful in the stage classification of lymphedema. Generally, time-constant models are applied to strain images, and precision of the fitting process, computational cost and versatility in response to changes in tissues properties are crucial aspects of clinical applications. In the work described here, we performed creep experiments on poroelastic phantoms and used rheologic models to visualize the changes in viscoelastic response associated with fluid mobility. We used the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm as a fitting tool and performed parametric studies to improve its performance. On the basis of these studies, we proposed an optimization schema for the pixel-to-pixel curve-fitting process. We determined that the bimodal Kelvin-Voigt model describes efficiently the temporal evolution of the strain images in heterogeneous phantoms.
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25
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Yuan S, Magarik M, Lex AM, Fleischer AC. Clinical applications of sonoelastography. Expert Rev Med Devices 2016; 13:1107-1117. [DOI: 10.1080/17434440.2016.1257938] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/21/2022]
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26
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Pitre JJ, Koziol LB, Kruger GH, Vollmer A, Ophir J, Ammann JJ, Weitzel WF, Bull JL. Design and Testing of a Single-Element Ultrasound Viscoelastography System for Point-of-Care Edema Quantification. ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE & BIOLOGY 2016; 42:2209-2219. [PMID: 27222246 PMCID: PMC4983502 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2016.04.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2015] [Revised: 03/08/2016] [Accepted: 04/18/2016] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
Management of fluid overload in patients with end-stage renal disease represents a unique challenge to clinical practice because of the lack of accurate and objective measurement methods. Currently, peripheral edema is subjectively assessed by palpation of the patient's extremities, ostensibly a qualitative indication of tissue viscoelastic properties. New robust quantitative estimates of tissue fluid content would allow clinicians to better guide treatment, minimizing reactive treatment decision making. Ultrasound viscoelastography (UVE) can be used to estimate strain in viscoelastic tissue, deriving material properties that can help guide treatment. We are developing and testing a simple, low-cost UVE system using a single-element imaging transducer that is simpler and less computationally demanding than array-based systems. This benchtop validation study tested the feasibility of using the UVE system by measuring the mechanical properties of a tissue-mimicking material under large strains. We generated depth-dependent creep curves and viscoelastic parameter maps of time constants and elastic moduli for the Kelvin model of viscoelasticity. During testing, the UVE system performed well, with mean UVE-measured strain matching standard mechanical testing with maximum absolute errors ≤4%. Motion tracking revealed high correlation and signal-to-noise ratios, indicating that the system is reliable.
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Affiliation(s)
- John J Pitre
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
| | - Leo B Koziol
- Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
| | - Grant H Kruger
- Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; Department of Anesthesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
| | - Alan Vollmer
- Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
| | - Jonathan Ophir
- Ultrasonics Laboratory, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Imaging, University of Texas Medical School, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Jean-Jacques Ammann
- Department of Physics, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago, Chile; G.E.A. Universitas SpA, Santiago, Chile
| | - William F Weitzel
- Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA; Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
| | - Joseph L Bull
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
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Chaudhry A, Yazdi IK, Kongari R, Tasciotti E, Righetti R. A New Class of Phantom Materials for Poroelastography Imaging Techniques. ULTRASOUND IN MEDICINE & BIOLOGY 2016; 42:1230-8. [PMID: 26806439 DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2015.12.013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2015] [Revised: 11/17/2015] [Accepted: 12/14/2015] [Indexed: 05/20/2023]
Abstract
Poroelastography is an elastographic technique used to image the temporal mechanical behavior of tissues. One of the major challenges in determining experimental potentials and limitations of this technique has been the lack of complex and realistic controlled phantoms that could be used to corroborate the limited number of theoretical and simulation studies available in the literature as well as to predict its performance in complex experimental situations and in a variety of conditions. In the study described here, we propose and analyze a new class of phantom materials for temporal elastography imaging. The results indicate that, by using polyacrylamide, we can generate inhomogeneous elastographic phantoms with controlled fluid content and fluid flow properties, while maintaining mechanical and ultrasonic properties similar to those of soft tissues.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anuj Chaudhry
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
| | - Iman K Yazdi
- Department of Nanomedicine, Houston Methodist Research Institute, Houston, Texas, USA; Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Rohit Kongari
- Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
| | - Ennio Tasciotti
- Department of Nanomedicine, Houston Methodist Research Institute, Houston, Texas, USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA.
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Suehiro K, Kakutani H, Nakamura K, Morikage N, Yamashita O, Harada T, Ueda K, Samura M, Tanaka Y, Takeuchi Y, Hamano K. Immediate Changes to Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue Strains Following Manual Lymph Drainage in Legs with Lymphedema. Ann Vasc Dis 2016; 9:30-4. [PMID: 27087870 DOI: 10.3400/avd.oa.15-00093] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/03/2015] [Accepted: 12/21/2015] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
OBJECTIVES To study the immediate impact of manual lymph drainage (MLD) on skin and subcutaneous tissue strains in legs with lymphedema using free-hand real-time tissue elastography (RTE). METHODS Skin and subcutaneous tissue strain measurements were taken at the middle of the inner thigh and calf by RTE in 20 legs with lymphedema of 18 patients (stage II: 11, late stage II: 7, stage III: 2) and in 70 legs of 35 normal subjects. In patients with lymphedema, the same measurements were repeated immediately following MLD. RESULTS Significant negative correlations were found between pre-MLD strains and the MLD-induced changes in thigh and calf skin strains (thigh skin: p <0.01, calf skin: p = 0.05), but not in subcutaneous tissue strains. Pre-MLD intercepts of these regression lines were closer to normal values as compared to mean pre-MLD values (normal thigh skin: 0.54% ± 0.30%, calf skin: 0.25% ± 0.18%, Pre-MLD thigh skin: 0.39% ± 0.20%, calf skin: 0.17% ± 0.12%, Pre-MLD intercept of thigh skin: 0.48%, Pre-MLD intercept of calf skin: 0.31%). CONCLUSIONS It appears that MLD did not simply soften the skin, but rather normalized it in terms of strain. However, this was not confirmed in the subcutaneous tissue.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kotaro Suehiro
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Hiromi Kakutani
- Department of Nursing, Yamaguchi University Hospital, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Kaori Nakamura
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Noriyasu Morikage
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Osamu Yamashita
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Takasuke Harada
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Koshiro Ueda
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Makoto Samura
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Yuya Tanaka
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Yuriko Takeuchi
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
| | - Kimikazu Hamano
- Division of Vascular Surgery, Department of Surgery and Clinical Science, Yamaguchi University Graduate School of Medicine, Ube, Yamaguchi, Japan
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Coutts LV, Miller NR, Mortimer PS, Bamber JC. Investigation of In Vivo skin stiffness anisotropy in breast cancer related lymphoedema. J Biomech 2016; 49:94-99. [PMID: 26684433 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2015.11.043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2015] [Revised: 11/16/2015] [Accepted: 11/21/2015] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
There is a limited range of suitable measurement techniques for detecting and assessing breast cancer related lymphoedema (BCRL). This study investigated the suitability of using skin stiffness measurements, with a particular focus on the variation in stiffness with measurement direction (known as anisotropy). In addition to comparing affected tissue with the unaffected tissue on the corresponding site on the opposite limb, volunteers without BCRL were tested to establish the normal variability in stiffness anisotropy between these two corresponding regions of skin on each opposite limb. Multi-directional stiffness was measured with an Extensometer, within the higher stiffness region that skin typically displays at high applied strains, using a previously established protocol developed by the authors. Healthy volunteers showed no significant difference in anisotropy between regions of skin on opposite limbs (mean decrease of 4.7 +/-2.5% between non-dominant and dominant arms), whereas BCRL sufferers showed a significant difference between limbs (mean decrease of 51.0+/-16.3% between unaffected and affected arms). A large difference in anisotropy was apparent even for those with recent onset of the condition, indicating that the technique may have potential to be useful for early detection. This difference also appeared to increase with duration since onset. Therefore, measurement of stiffness anisotropy has potential value for the clinical assessment and diagnosis of skin conditions such as BCRL. The promising results justify a larger study with a larger number of participants.
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Affiliation(s)
- L V Coutts
- Institute of Cancer Research, Joint Department of Physics, Surrey, England, United Kingdom.
| | - N R Miller
- Institute of Cancer Research, Joint Department of Physics, Surrey, England, United Kingdom
| | - P S Mortimer
- Institute of Cardiovascular and Cell Sciences (Dermatology Unit), St George׳s Hospital, University of London, London, United Kingdom
| | - J C Bamber
- Institute of Cancer Research, Joint Department of Physics, Surrey, England, United Kingdom
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Abstract
The tumour microenvironment may contribute to tumorigenesis owing to mechanical forces such as fibrotic stiffness or mechanical pressure caused by the expansion of hyper-proliferative cells. Here we explore the contribution of the mechanical pressure exerted by tumour growth onto non-tumorous adjacent epithelium. In the early stage of mouse colon tumour development in the Notch(+)Apc(+/1638N) mouse model, we observed mechanistic pressure stress in the non-tumorous epithelial cells caused by hyper-proliferative adjacent crypts overexpressing active Notch, which is associated with increased Ret and β-catenin signalling. We thus developed a method that allows the delivery of a defined mechanical pressure in vivo, by subcutaneously inserting a magnet close to the mouse colon. The implanted magnet generated a magnetic force on ultra-magnetic liposomes, stabilized in the mesenchymal cells of the connective tissue surrounding colonic crypts after intravenous injection. The magnetically induced pressure quantitatively mimicked the endogenous early tumour growth stress in the order of 1,200 Pa, without affecting tissue stiffness, as monitored by ultrasound strain imaging and shear wave elastography. The exertion of pressure mimicking that of tumour growth led to rapid Ret activation and downstream phosphorylation of β-catenin on Tyr654, imparing its interaction with the E-cadherin in adherens junctions, and which was followed by β-catenin nuclear translocation after 15 days. As a consequence, increased expression of β-catenin-target genes was observed at 1 month, together with crypt enlargement accompanying the formation of early tumorous aberrant crypt foci. Mechanical activation of the tumorigenic β-catenin pathway suggests unexplored modes of tumour propagation based on mechanical signalling pathways in healthy epithelial cells surrounding the tumour, which may contribute to tumour heterogeneity.
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31
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Mechanical induction of the tumorigenic β-catenin pathway by tumour growth pressure. Nature 2015; 523:92-5. [PMID: 25970250 DOI: 10.1038/nature14329] [Citation(s) in RCA: 231] [Impact Index Per Article: 25.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2013] [Accepted: 02/13/2015] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
The tumour microenvironment may contribute to tumorigenesis owing to mechanical forces such as fibrotic stiffness or mechanical pressure caused by the expansion of hyper-proliferative cells. Here we explore the contribution of the mechanical pressure exerted by tumour growth onto non-tumorous adjacent epithelium. In the early stage of mouse colon tumour development in the Notch(+)Apc(+/1638N) mouse model, we observed mechanistic pressure stress in the non-tumorous epithelial cells caused by hyper-proliferative adjacent crypts overexpressing active Notch, which is associated with increased Ret and β-catenin signalling. We thus developed a method that allows the delivery of a defined mechanical pressure in vivo, by subcutaneously inserting a magnet close to the mouse colon. The implanted magnet generated a magnetic force on ultra-magnetic liposomes, stabilized in the mesenchymal cells of the connective tissue surrounding colonic crypts after intravenous injection. The magnetically induced pressure quantitatively mimicked the endogenous early tumour growth stress in the order of 1,200 Pa, without affecting tissue stiffness, as monitored by ultrasound strain imaging and shear wave elastography. The exertion of pressure mimicking that of tumour growth led to rapid Ret activation and downstream phosphorylation of β-catenin on Tyr654, imparing its interaction with the E-cadherin in adherens junctions, and which was followed by β-catenin nuclear translocation after 15 days. As a consequence, increased expression of β-catenin-target genes was observed at 1 month, together with crypt enlargement accompanying the formation of early tumorous aberrant crypt foci. Mechanical activation of the tumorigenic β-catenin pathway suggests unexplored modes of tumour propagation based on mechanical signalling pathways in healthy epithelial cells surrounding the tumour, which may contribute to tumour heterogeneity.
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Nair S, Varghese J, Chaudhry A, Righetti R. Effect of temporal acquisition parameters on image quality of strain time constant elastography. ULTRASONIC IMAGING 2015; 37:87-100. [PMID: 24942645 DOI: 10.1177/0161734614539665] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/03/2023]
Abstract
Ultrasound methods to image the time constant (TC) of elastographic tissue parameters have been recently developed. Elastographic TC images from creep or stress relaxation tests have been shown to provide information on the viscoelastic and poroelastic behavior of tissues. However, the effect of temporal ultrasonic acquisition parameters and input noise on the image quality of the resultant strain TC elastograms has not been fully investigated yet. Understanding such effects could have important implications for clinical applications of these novel techniques. This work reports a simulation study aimed at investigating the effects of varying windows of observation, acquisition frame rate, and strain signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on the image quality of elastographic TC estimates. A pilot experimental study was used to corroborate the simulation results in specific testing conditions. The results of this work suggest that the total acquisition time necessary for accurate strain TC estimates has a linear dependence to the underlying strain TC (as estimated from the theoretical strain-vs.-time curve). The results also indicate that it might be possible to make accurate estimates of the elastographic TC (within 10% error) using windows of observation as small as 20% of the underlying TC, provided sufficiently fast acquisition rates (>100 Hz for typical acquisition depths). The limited experimental data reported in this study statistically confirm the simulation trends, proving that the proposed model can be used as upper bound guidance for the correct execution of the experiments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sanjay Nair
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Joshua Varghese
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Anuj Chaudhry
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
| | - Raffaella Righetti
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
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Pattison AJ, McGarry M, Weaver JB, Paulsen KD. Spatially-resolved hydraulic conductivity estimation via poroelastic magnetic resonance elastography. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2014; 33:1373-1380. [PMID: 24771571 PMCID: PMC4510837 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2014.2311456] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
Poroelastic magnetic resonance elastography is an imaging technique that could recover mechanical and hydrodynamical material properties of in vivo tissue. To date, mechanical properties have been estimated while hydrodynamical parameters have been assumed homogeneous with literature-based values. Estimating spatially-varying hydraulic conductivity would likely improve model accuracy and provide new image information related to a tissue's interstitial fluid compartment. A poroelastic model was reformulated to recover hydraulic conductivity with more appropriate fluid-flow boundary conditions. Simulated and physical experiments were conducted to evaluate the accuracy and stability of the inversion algorithm. Simulations were accurate (property errors were < 2%) even in the presence of Gaussian measurement noise up to 3%. The reformulated model significantly decreased variation in the shear modulus estimate (p << 0.001) and eliminated the homogeneity assumption and the need to assign hydraulic conductivity values from literature. Material property contrast was recovered experimentally in three different tofu phantoms and the accuracy was improved through soft-prior regularization. A frequency-dependence in hydraulic conductivity contrast was observed suggesting that fluid-solid interactions may be more prominent at low frequency. In vivo recovery of both structural and hydrodynamical characteristics of tissue could improve detection and diagnosis of neurological disorders such as hydrocephalus and brain tumors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adam J. Pattison
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 USA
| | - Matthew McGarry
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 USA
| | - John B. Weaver
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 USA and also with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756 USA
| | - Keith D. Paulsen
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 USA and also with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH 03756 USA
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Doyley MM, Parker KJ. Elastography: general principles and clincial applications. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2014; 9:1-11. [PMID: 24459461 DOI: 10.1016/j.cult.2013.09.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 42] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/09/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- M M Doyley
- University of Rochester, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hopeman, Engineering Building 343, Box 270126, Rochester, NY 14627, USA
| | - K J Parker
- University of Rochester, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hopeman, Engineering Building 343, Box 270126, Rochester, NY 14627, USA
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Albocher U, Barbone P, Richards M, Oberai A, Harari I. Approaches to accommodate noisy data in the direct solution of inverse problems in incompressible plane-strain elasticity. INVERSE PROBLEMS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING 2014; 22:1307-1328. [PMID: 25383085 PMCID: PMC4222193 DOI: 10.1080/17415977.2013.872100] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/11/2023]
Abstract
We apply the adjoint weighted equation method (AWE) to the direct solution of inverse problems of incompressible plane strain elasticity. We show that based on untreated noisy displacements, the reconstruction of the shear modulus can be very poor. We link this poor performance to loss of coercivity of the weak form when treating problems with discontinuous coefficients. We demonstrate that by smoothing the displacements and appending a regularization term to the AWE formulation, a dramatic improvement in the reconstruction can be achieved. With these improvements, the advantages of the AWE method as a direct solution approach can be extended to a wider range of problems.
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Affiliation(s)
- U. Albocher
- Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Ramat Aviv, Israel
| | - P.E. Barbone
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
| | - M.S. Richards
- Department of Surgery, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14642, USA
| | - A.A. Oberai
- Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA
| | - I. Harari
- Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Ramat Aviv, Israel
- Corresponding author.
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Chaudhry A, Unnikrishnan G, Reddy JN, Krouskop TA, Righetti R. Effect of permeability on the performance of elastographic imaging techniques. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2013; 32:189-199. [PMID: 23033327 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2012.2219317] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/01/2023]
Abstract
Elastography is a well-established imaging modality. While a number of studies aimed at evaluating the performance of elastographic techniques are retrievable in the literature, very little information is available on the effects that the presence of an underlying permeability contrast in the tissue may have on the resulting elastograms. Permeability is a fundamental tissue parameter, which characterizes the ease with which fluid can move within a tissue. This parameter plays a central role both biomechanically in the description of the temporal behavior of fluid-filled tissues and clinically in the development of a number of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities. In this paper, we present a simulation study that investigates selected elastographic image quality factors in nonhomogeneous materials, modeled as poroelastic media with different geometries and permeability contrasts. The results of this study indicate that the presence of an underlying permeability contrast may create a new contrast mechanism in the spatial and temporal distributions of the axial strains and the effective Poisson's ratios experienced by the tissue and as imaged by the corresponding elastograms. The effect of permeability on the elastographic image quality factors analyzed in this study was found to be a nonsymmetric function of the underlying mechanical contrast between background and target, the geometry of the material and the boundary conditions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anuj Chaudhry
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
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Abstract
Elastography is emerging as an imaging modality that can distinguish normal versus diseased tissues via their biomechanical properties. This paper reviews current approaches to elastography in three areas--quasi-static, harmonic and transient--and describes inversion schemes for each elastographic imaging approach. Approaches include first-order approximation methods; direct and iterative inversion schemes for linear elastic; isotropic materials and advanced reconstruction methods for recovering parameters that characterize complex mechanical behavior. The paper's objective is to document efforts to develop elastography within the framework of solving an inverse problem, so that elastography may provide reliable estimates of shear modulus and other mechanical parameters. We discuss issues that must be addressed if model-based elastography is to become the prevailing approach to quasi-static, harmonic and transient elastography: (1) developing practical techniques to transform the ill-posed problem with a well-posed one; (2) devising better forward models to capture the complex mechanical behavior of soft tissues and (3) developing better test procedures to evaluate the performance of modulus elastograms.
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Affiliation(s)
- M M Doyley
- University of Rochester, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hopeman Engineering Building 413, Box 270126, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.
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Sarvazyan A, Hall TJ, Urban MW, Fatemi M, Aglyamov SR, Garra BS. AN OVERVIEW OF ELASTOGRAPHY - AN EMERGING BRANCH OF MEDICAL IMAGING. Curr Med Imaging 2011; 7:255-282. [PMID: 22308105 PMCID: PMC3269947 DOI: 10.2174/157340511798038684] [Citation(s) in RCA: 235] [Impact Index Per Article: 18.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/20/2022]
Abstract
From times immemorial manual palpation served as a source of information on the state of soft tissues and allowed detection of various diseases accompanied by changes in tissue elasticity. During the last two decades, the ancient art of palpation gained new life due to numerous emerging elasticity imaging (EI) methods. Areas of applications of EI in medical diagnostics and treatment monitoring are steadily expanding. Elasticity imaging methods are emerging as commercial applications, a true testament to the progress and importance of the field.In this paper we present a brief history and theoretical basis of EI, describe various techniques of EI and, analyze their advantages and limitations, and overview main clinical applications. We present a classification of elasticity measurement and imaging techniques based on the methods used for generating a stress in the tissue (external mechanical force, internal ultrasound radiation force, or an internal endogenous force), and measurement of the tissue response. The measurement method can be performed using differing physical principles including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound imaging, X-ray imaging, optical and acoustic signals.Until recently, EI was largely a research method used by a few select institutions having the special equipment needed to perform the studies. Since 2005 however, increasing numbers of mainstream manufacturers have added EI to their ultrasound systems so that today the majority of manufacturers offer some sort of Elastography or tissue stiffness imaging on their clinical systems. Now it is safe to say that some sort of elasticity imaging may be performed on virtually all types of focal and diffuse disease. Most of the new applications are still in the early stages of research, but a few are becoming common applications in clinical practice.
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Palmeri ML, Nightingale KR. What challenges must be overcome before ultrasound elasticity imaging is ready for the clinic? IMAGING IN MEDICINE 2011; 3:433-444. [PMID: 22171226 PMCID: PMC3235674 DOI: 10.2217/iim.11.41] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/05/2023]
Abstract
Ultrasound elasticity imaging has been a research interest for the past 20 years with the goal of generating novel images of soft tissues based on their material properties (i.e., stiffness and viscosity). The motivation for such an imaging modality lies in the fact that many soft tissues can share similar ultrasonic echogenicities, but may have very different mechanical properties that can be used to clearly visualize normal anatomy and delineate diseased tissues and masses. Recently, elasticity imaging techniques have moved from the laboratory to the clinical setting, where clinicians are beginning to characterize tissue stiffness as a diagnostic metric and commercial implementations of ultrasonic elasticity imaging are beginning to appear on the market. This article provides a foundation for elasticity imaging, an overview of current research and commercial realizations of elasticity imaging technology and a perspective on the current successes, limitations and potential for improvement of these imaging technologies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mark L Palmeri
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
- Department of Anesthesiology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA
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Nair SP, Yang X, Krouskop TA, Righetti R. Performance analysis of a new real-time elastographic time constant estimator. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2011; 30:497-511. [PMID: 20952333 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2010.2087344] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/30/2023]
Abstract
New elastographic techniques such as poroelastography and viscoelasticity imaging aim at imaging the temporal mechanical behavior of tissues. These techniques usually involve the use of curve fitting methods being applied to noisy data to estimate new elastographic parameters. As of today, however, current elastographic implementations of poroelastography and viscoelasticity imaging methods are in general too slow and not optimized for clinical applications. Furthermore, image quality performance of these new elastographic techniques is still largely unknown due to a paucity of data and the lack of systematic studies that analyze their performance limitations. In this paper, we propose a new elastographic time constant (TC) estimator, which is based on the use of the least square error (LSE) curve-fitting method and the Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) optimization rule as applied to noisy elastographic data obtained from a material in a creep-type experiment. The algorithm is executed on a massively parallel general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) to achieve real-time performance. The estimator's performance is analyzed using simulations. Experimental results obtained from poroelastic phantoms are presented as a proof of principle of the new estimator's technical applicability on real experimental data. The results of this study demonstrate that the newly proposed elastographic estimator can produce highly accurate and sensitive elastographic TC estimates in real-time and at high signal-to-noise ratios.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sanjay P Nair
- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
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Perriñez PR, Kennedy FE, Van Houten EEW, Weaver JB, Paulsen KD. Magnetic resonance poroelastography: an algorithm for estimating the mechanical properties of fluid-saturated soft tissues. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING 2010; 29:746-55. [PMID: 20199912 PMCID: PMC2865251 DOI: 10.1109/tmi.2009.2035309] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/21/2023]
Abstract
Magnetic resonance poroelastography (MRPE) is introduced as an alternative to single-phase model-based elastographic reconstruction methods. A 3-D finite element poroelastic inversion algorithm was developed to recover the mechanical properties of fluid-saturated tissues. The performance of this algorithm was assessed through a variety of numerical experiments, using synthetic data to probe its stability and sensitivity to the relevant model parameters. Preliminary results suggest the algorithm is robust in the presence of noise and capable of producing accurate assessments of the underlying mechanical properties in simulated phantoms. Furthermore, a 3-D time-harmonic motion field was recorded for a poroelastic phantom containing a single cylindrical inclusion and used to assess the feasibility of MRPE image reconstruction from experimental data. The elastograms obtained from the proposed poroelastic algorithm demonstrate significant improvement over linearly elastic MRE images generated using the same data. In addition, MRPE offers the opportunity to estimate the time-harmonic pressure field resulting from tissue excitation, highlighting the potential for its application in the diagnosis and monitoring of disease processes associated with changes in interstitial pressure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Phillip R Perriñez
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
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Abstract
Elastography is a new imaging modality where elastic tissue parameters related to the structural organization of normal and pathological tissues are imaged. Basic principles underlying the quasi-static elastography concept and principles are addressed. The rationale for elastographic imaging is reinforced using data on elastic properties of normal and abnormal soft tissues. The several orders of magnitude difference between the elastic modulus of normal and abnormal tissues which is the primary contrast mechanism in elastographic imaging underlines the probability of success with this imaging modality. Recent advances enabling the clinical practice of elastographic imaging in real-time on clinical ultrasound systems is also discussed.In quasi-static elastography, radiofrequency echo signals acquired before and after a small (about 1%) of applied deformation are correlated to estimate tissue displacements. Local tissue displacement vector estimates between small segments of the pre- and post-deformation signals are estimated and the corresponding strain distribution imaged. Elastographic imaging techniques are based on the hypothesis that soft tissues deform more than stiffer tissue, and these differences can be quantified in images of the tissue strain tensor or the Young's modulus.Clinical applications of quasi-static elastography have mushroomed over the last decade, with the most commonly imaged areas being the breast, prostate, thyroid, cardiac, treatment monitoring of ablation procedures and vascular imaging applications.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tomy Varghese
- Department of Medical Physics, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI-53706, USA
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Perriñez PR, Kennedy FE, Van Houten EEW, Weaver JB, Paulsen KD. Modeling of soft poroelastic tissue in time-harmonic MR elastography. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 2008; 56:598-608. [PMID: 19272864 DOI: 10.1109/tbme.2008.2009928] [Citation(s) in RCA: 66] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/05/2022]
Abstract
Elastography is an emerging imaging technique that focuses on assessing the resistance to deformation of soft biological tissues in vivo. Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) uses measured displacement fields resulting from low-amplitude, low-frequency (10 Hz-1 kHz) time-harmonic vibration to recover images of the elastic property distribution of tissues including breast, liver, muscle, prostate, and brain. While many soft tissues display complex time-dependent behavior not described by linear elasticity, the models most commonly employed in MRE parameter reconstructions are based on elastic assumptions. Further, elasticity models fail to include the interstitial fluid phase present in vivo. Alternative continuum models, such as consolidation theory, are able to represent tissue and other materials comprising two distinct phases, generally consisting of a porous elastic solid and penetrating fluid. MRE reconstructions of simulated elastic and poroelastic phantoms were performed to investigate the limitations of current-elasticity-based methods in producing accurate elastic parameter estimates in poroelastic media. The results indicate that linearly elastic reconstructions of fluid-saturated porous media at amplitudes and frequencies relevant to steady-state MRE can yield misleading effective property distributions resulting from the complex interaction between their solid and fluid phases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Phillip R Perriñez
- Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
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Blei F. Literature watch. Adrenomedullin signaling is necessary for murine lymphatic vascular development. Lymphat Res Biol 2008; 6:45-59. [PMID: 18361770 DOI: 10.1089/lrb.2008.6102] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/26/2022] Open
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