Shear Modulus Identification in Soft Tissue‐like Materials

Elastography is a method motivated by the observation that changes in tissue elasticity are generally correlated with pathological phenomena. By applying quasi-static compression to the considered tissue-like object, components of the internal displacement field can be determined with an ultrasound-elastography system. Based on the assumption that the investigated material is elastic, isotropic, and nearly incompressible, the stiffness distribution can be calculated from the displacement field in the framework of inverse problems. In this paper, existing procedures for calculating the shear modulus distribution with knowledge of internal displacement field are presented. The methods are compared with respect to the stability of algorithms using numerical simulations and ultrasound measurements. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)