Acoustic and elastic imaging to model disease-induced changes in soft tissue structure

Abstract

Ultrasonic techniques are presented for the study of soft biological tissue structure and function. Changes in echo waveforms caused by microscopic variations in the elastic properties of tissue can reveal disease mechanism, in vivo. On a larger scale, elasticity imaging describes the macroscopic elastic properties of soft tissues. We present an analysis framework and preliminary results for studying disease-induced changes in soft tissue using these two acoustic techniques to investigate structural changes at different scales.