[Simulating experimental study on ultrasonic elastography based monitoring of cryosurgery]

Noticing the phenomenon that biological tissues will change its elasticity by orders of magnitude after it was frozen, we proposed in principle the strategy of using ultrasound elastography to monitor the formation and thawing of the iceball when performing a cryosurgery. Following our former theoretical evaluation, conceptual experiments were designed to apply ultrasound elastography to monitor three kinds of testing samples which includes: phantom embedded with glass block, phantom with tissues at normal temperature and phantom with frozen tissues inside. It was demonstrated for the first time that the ultrasound elastography could provide a high contrast picture on the ice ball during cryosurgery. The measurement errors involved in the application of the method was preliminarily analyzed and approaches to further improve the method were pointed out. With a much different value in elastography than that of water, monitoring the ice ball, the imaging target in clinics, is expected to be an important area for the application of ultrasound elastography.