Tomoelastography

It is an advancement of elastography[1][2][3] in that it generates unmasked maps of stiffness and viscosity across the entire field of view that can be captured with a given imaging modality.

Tomoelastography requires external driver systems, which can efficiently generate shear waves throughout the entire field of view including tissues deep within the body.

Tomoelastography often employs mechanical vibrations at several driving frequencies for multifrequency wave analysis in order to stabilize inverse problem solutions for viscoelasticity reconstructions.

A standard way of multifrequency viscoelasticity reconstruction is based on phase gradient analysis of plane waves[5] whereas other methods employ solutions of the Helmholtz equation.

[6][7][8] The feasibility of tomoelastography was first demonstrated in the human abdomen using multifrequency MRE, where it was possible for the first time to display stiffness values (quantified as shear wave speed in m/s) across the entire axial MRI slice.