Visualization of Human Skeletal Muscle Mechanical Anisotropy by Using Dual-Direction Shear Wave Imaging

Visualization of Human Skeletal Muscle Mechanical Anisotropy by Using Dual-Direction Shear Wave Imaging

Visualization of Human Skeletal Muscle Mechanical Anisotropy by Using Dual-Direction Shear Wave Imaging 789 444 IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (TBME)
Author(s): Guo-Xuan Xu, Pei-Yu Chen, Xiao Ning Jiang, Chih-Chung Huang

Ultrasound (US) shear wave elasticity imaging (SWEI) is a mature technique for diagnosing the elasticity of isotropic tissues. However, the elasticity of anisotropic tissues, such as muscle and tendon, cannot be diagnosed correctly using SWEI because the tissue fiber changes the shear wave velocity (SWV). Recently, SWEI has been employed for measuring the anisotropic properties of muscles by rotating the transducer; however, this is not convenient for clinical use.

In this study, a novel dual-direction shear wave imaging (DDSWI) technique was proposed for visualizing the anisotropy of muscles without transducer rotation. Longitudinal and transverse shear waves were created by a specially designed external vibrator and supersonic pushing beam, respectively; the SWVs were then tracked using ultrafast US imaging. Subsequently, the SWV maps of two directions were obtained at the same scanning cross section, and the anisotropy was represented as the ratio between them at each pixel.

The performance of DDSWI was verified using a standard phantom, and human experiments were performed on the gastrocnemius and biceps brachii. Experimental results of phantom revealed that DDSWI exhibited a high precision of <0.81 % and a low bias of <3.88 % in SWV measurements. The distribution of anisotropic properties in muscle was visualized with the anisotropic ratios of 1.54 and 2.27 for the gastrocnemius and biceps brachii, respectively.

The results highlight the potential of this novel anisotropy imaging in clinical applications because the conditions of musculoskeletal fiber orientation can be easily and accurately evaluated in real time by DDSWI.

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