3D Shear Wave Absolute Vibro-Elastography System for Targeted Prostate Biopsy: Initial Results

Quantitative tissue stiffness characterization can aid in diagnosing prostate cancer (PCa). Shear wave absolute vibro-elastography (SWAVE) provides volumetric, multi-frequency shear wave imaging with external excitation. In this work, we present a first-of-a-kind 3D multi-frequency endorectal SWAVE system with probe-mounted exciter for prostate imaging. The system uses a SonixTouch Ultrasound (US) with minimum hardware addition- making it compatible with the current clinical workflow. The exciter is designed to be sterilizable and it attaches to the US transducer and is programmed with a function generator. Sector-wise sequencing is utilized to boost the effective framerate of the US and satisfy the Nyquist sampling rate for tissue motion tracking. We characterize the system with quality assurance elastography phantoms and human liver data of healthy subjects- comparing with 3D Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE). High correlations between SWAVE and MRE were obtained in both phantoms (99%) and liver (94%).