Faculty
Schulich Medicine and Dentistry
Supervisor Name
Abbas Samani
Keywords
ultrasound elastography, breast cancer, tissue mechanics
Description
A timely diagnosis of breast cancer is one of the largest factors in lowering mortality rates. Ultrasound Elastography (USE) is one of such diagnostic methods, and uses the fact that tumours are stiffer than surrounding breast tissue for their detection. It is used to generate strain images of the breast undergoing mechanical stimulation, which under the tissue stress uniformity assumption, can be used as an estimate of tissue stiffness. While USE is inexpensive and accessible, the images it produces are of low quality. The combination of axial strain images and accurate lateral strain images can be used to produce high quality stiffness images, and the accuracy of strain images can be improved by applying tissue mechanics-based constraints. Our objective was to improve our existing strain-refining algorithm by expanding on tissue deformation compatibility through including the full set of strain compatibility equations.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Undergraduate Student Research Internship program for this research opportunity, and Dr. Abbas Samani and Matthew Caius for their guidance throughout the duration of my internship.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Document Type
Poster
Tissue Mechanics-based Algorithm for Improving Strain Accuracy in Ultrasound Elastography
A timely diagnosis of breast cancer is one of the largest factors in lowering mortality rates. Ultrasound Elastography (USE) is one of such diagnostic methods, and uses the fact that tumours are stiffer than surrounding breast tissue for their detection. It is used to generate strain images of the breast undergoing mechanical stimulation, which under the tissue stress uniformity assumption, can be used as an estimate of tissue stiffness. While USE is inexpensive and accessible, the images it produces are of low quality. The combination of axial strain images and accurate lateral strain images can be used to produce high quality stiffness images, and the accuracy of strain images can be improved by applying tissue mechanics-based constraints. Our objective was to improve our existing strain-refining algorithm by expanding on tissue deformation compatibility through including the full set of strain compatibility equations.