Obtaining Equivalent Liver Shear Wave Speed Measurements with Multiple Transducers

This work demonstrates how tuning of processing parameters can minimize differences in shear wave speeds between ultrasound systems, transducers, and shear wave modes. Shear speeds were measured in the livers of 38 healthy volunteers and in 4 elasticity phantoms. Phantom and clinical data for each transducer and acquisition format were reprocessed offline using different permutations of five processing parameters. Prior to parameter optimization, statistically significant differences were seen between measurements acquired with a Siemens ACUSON S2000 and those acquired with the Siemens ACUSON Sequoia. Optimization of processing parameters was shown to be successful in eliminating significant differences between clinical systems, as well as differences between transducers and shear wave modes on the ACUSON Sequoia.