Indirect Shear Wave Excitation for Brain Magnetic Resonance Elastography With Minimal Cerebral Blood Flow Alteration

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) of brain relies on inducing and measuring shear waves in the brain. However, studies have shown vibration could induce changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF), which has a modulation effect and can affect the biomechanical properties measured.

This work demonstrates the initial prototype of the indirect excitation method, which can generate shear waves in the brain with minimal changes in CBF.

A simple system was designed to produce stable vibrations underneath the neck. Instead of directly stimulating the skull, shear waves were indirectly transmitted to the brain through the spine and brainstem.

Phantom results showed that the proposed actuator did not interfere with the routine imaging sequence and successfully generated multifrequency shear waves. When compared with the conventional direct head stimulation method, brain MRE results from the proposed actuator showed no significant differences in terms of intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and coefficients of variation (CV). Moreover, the octahedral shear strain (OSS) generated by the indirect excitation in the frontal and parietal lobes decreased by 25.96% and 16.73% respectively. Evaluation of CBF in healthy volunteers revealed no significant changes for the indirect excitation method, whereas significant decreases in CBF were observed in four subregions when employing direct excitation.

The proposed actuator offers a more accurate and comfortable approach to MRE measurements while causing minimal CBF alterations.

This work presents the first demonstration of an indirect excitation brain MRE system that minimizes CBF changes, thus holding potential for future applications of brain MRE.