The Geometric Dependence of Wave Velocity in Carotid Arteries: Phantom and Finite Element Study and Implications for Vascular "Shear Wave" Elastography.

Objective: The intrinsic elasticity and the structural stiffness of blood vessels are widely regarded as important biomarkers for prediction of cardiovascular disease risk, the leading cause of death worldwide. Ultrasound-based shear wave elastography (SWE) has been used to measure these properties in several clinical studies. However, the geometric properties of blood vessels complicate the relationship between wave speed and elasticity in blood vessels compared to bulk tissue.

Twin Peak Method for Estimating Tissue Viscoelasticity Using Shear Wave Elastography.

Tissue viscoelasticity is becoming an increasingly useful biomarker beyond elasticity and can theoretically be estimated using shear wave elastography by inverting the propagation and attenuation characteristics of shear waves. Estimating viscosity is often more difficult than elasticity because attenuation, the main effect of viscosity, leads to poor signal-to-noise ratio of the shear wave motion. In the present work, we provide an alternative to existing methods of viscoelasticity estimation, based on peaks in the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain, which are considered more robust against noise compared with other features in the f-k domain.