Ultrasonic shear wave imaging for detecting liver cracks: An ex vivo investigation
ePoster
Authors: Jingfei Liu, Texas Tech University
A liver crack is a type of liver trauma in which a capsular tear of different geometries occurs due to external impacts. Since liver crack is an essential source of morbidity and mortality in emergency medicine, timely and accurate detection of the crack location and geometry is highly demanded. In current emergency care, ultrasonography, although it has low accuracy, is mainly used for an initial examination of liver trauma due to its immediate availability, high mobility, and nonionizing nature. To improve the diagnosis accuracy, ultrasonic shear wave imaging, a technique based on shear wave generation and tracking in liver tissue, was proposed. In this study, the feasibility and effectiveness of this method was investigated in an ex vivo scenario. A porcine liver with cracks of different geometries was tested. Shear waves were generated using acoustic radiation force impulse and recorded using ultrafast ultrasound imaging. To find the best way to display the cracks, different methods of signal processing based on time-of-flight, shear wave modulus, and accumulated shear wave path were applied to the shear wave displacement extracted. The results show that shear wave imaging is more sensitive than conventional ultrasonography in detecting liver cracks.