On the use of a modified optical flow algorithm for the correction of axial strain estimates in ultrasonic elastography in medical diagnosis

Summary: We present a new system for imaging the elastic properties of prostate tissue in vivo by estimating, correcting, and visualizing the tissue strain from local axial time shift estimates. We show that the image quality of the strain images can be significantly improved by the correction of lateral motion components using a modified optical flow algorithm. Phantom images and clinical in vivo data are presented which show the high potential of the system for early tumor detection.