X-ray elastography by visualizing propagating shear waves

Abstract

Elastography, an imaging modality for mapping elastic modulus in soft viscoelastic materials, has been developed using magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound imaging, but few studies were reported on using X-ray imaging. We report on dynamic X-ray elastography, which relies on shear-wave propagation. We pneumatically vibrated polyacrylamide gel phantoms and obtained two-dimensional maps of storage and loss moduli, which were determined from temporal variation in displacement vectors of the vibrating particles in the phantoms. Our experiment provided storage moduli with a precision of 30% and a spatial resolution was one order of magnitude higher than other imaging modalities.