Interactive Display Methods for Ultrasound Strain Imaging

Abstract

Recently, ultrasound strain imaging is an adequate supplement for commonly used diagnostic procedures to detect tumors, which have a higher mechanical hardness than the surrounding tissue with the specific elastic properties. The strain image is acquired while the organ is slightly compressed by the ultrasound probe. Then the detected strain values can be displayed as a gray scale image where the dark areas correspond to the hard tissue and the light areas indicate the soft tissue. Because a sequence of strain images always represents a compression or decompression cycle in the exam, the calculated strain values at the transition frames, in general, are not reliable and result in errors shown as artifacts in display. These artifacts will significantly distract the ability to interpret the strain information in real-time or display in cine loop. The purpose of this paper is to present display techniques which are particularly useful for detecting the noisy strain frames during the transition between the compression and decompression process. Moreover, we applied a local motion detector to compensate the probe motion during the exam so that we can enhance the signal to noise ratio in display based on the right spatial registration. This paper also presents an interactive graphics tool where a motion displacement curve is synchronized with the strain imaging frame by frame. One can use this tool as feedback to ensure reliable data acquisition. Furthermore, one can select a right section of compression and decompression cycle and use this section for display.