Passive elastography: from organ to cell (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Elastography, sometimes referred as seismology of the human body, is an imaging modality recently implemented on medical ultrasound systems. It allows to measure shear waves within soft tissues and gives a tomography reconstruction of the shear elasticity. This elasticity map is useful for early cancer detection. A general overview of this field is given in the first part of the presentation as well as latest developments. The second part, is devoted to the application of time reversal or noise correlation technique in the field of elastography. The idea, as in seismology, is to take advantage of shear waves naturally present in the human body due to muscles activities to construct shear elasticity map of soft tissues. It is thus a passive elastography approach since no shear wave sources are used. In the third part some examples are provided using ultrasounds, MRI or optic to detect shear waves and reconstruct a speed tomography in a human liver, thyroid, brain, in a mouse eye and a single cell.