Automated system for point shearwave elastography (pSWE) in rodent livers

Point shear wave elastography (pSWE) provides noninvasive measures of mechanical stiffness of biological tissue. Over the past decade, research has demonstrated that pSWE is effective at diagnosing a multitude of pathologies such as liver fibrosis and cancer. Life science researchers stand to benefit tremendously from access to pSWE but a number of challenges have limited its use in small animals. First, high frequency pSWE imaging suffers from transducer heating challenges and bandwidth requirements. Second, pSWE measurements are highly susceptible to variations in the environment and operator (e.g. precompression of tissue, transducer placement, etc.) which bias measurements and introduce error. Therefore, the objective of this work is to develop a robotically controlled, non-contact pSWE system capable of measuring liver stiffness in rodents.