Signal processing strategies in acoustic elastography

Elastography is a remote sensing technique for imaging the elastic properties of biological tissues. An essential feature is tissue deformation (strain) that is measured by cross correlating ultrasonic echo waveforms acquired before and after a weak static compression. To fully exploit the large object contrast available among body tissues, many dependent experimental parameters must be carefully adjusted. This paper outlines a strategy for selecting the applied stress field including boundary conditions, transducer frequency and bandwidth, and echo window length and overlap that minimize elastographic noise and maximize dynamic range for a given spatial resolution.