Error in estimates of tissue material properties from shear wave dispersion ultrasound vibrometry

Shear wave velocity measurements are used in elasticity imaging to find the shear elasticity and viscosity of tissue. A technique called shear wave dispersion ultrasound vibrometry (SDUV) has been introduced to use the dispersive nature of shear wave velocity to locally estimate the material properties of tissue. Shear waves are created using a multifrequency ultrasound radiation force, and the propagating shear waves are measured a few millimeters away from the excitation point. The shear wave velocity is measured using a repetitive pulse-echo method and Kalman filtering to find the phase of the harmonic shear wave at 2 different locations. A viscoelastic Voigt model and the shear wave velocity measurements at different frequencies are used to find the shear elasticity (mu(1)) and viscosity (mu(2)) of the tissue. The purpose of this paper is to report the accuracy of the SDUV method over a range of different values of mu(1) and mu(2). A motion detection model of a vibrating scattering medium was used to analyze measurement errors of vibration phase in a scattering medium. To assess the accuracy of the SDUV method, we modeled the effects of phase errors on estimates of shear wave velocity and material properties while varying parameters such as shear stiffness and viscosity, shear wave amplitude, the distance between shear wave measurements (delta r), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the ultrasound pulse-echo method, and the frequency range of the measurements. We performed an experiment in a section of porcine muscle to evaluate variation of the aforementioned parameters on the estimated shear wave velocity and material property measurements and to validate the error prediction model. The model showed that errors in the shear wave velocity and material property estimates were minimized by maximizing shear wave amplitude, pulse-echo SNR, delta r, and the bandwidth used for shear wave measurements. The experimental model showed optimum performance could be obtained for delta r = 3 - 6 mm, SNR =35 dB, with a frequency range of 100 to 600 Hz, and with a shear wave amplitude on the order of a few microns down to 0.5 microm. The model provides a basis to explore different parameters related to implementation of the SDUV method. The experiment confirmed conclusions made by the model, and the results can be used for optimization of SDUV.