Non-diffractive Acoustic Radiation Force Push Sequence for Shear Wave Viscoelastography

Accoustic in-homogeneities within biological tissues are known to degrade image quality in elastography. Previous work has demonstrated the potential of Bessel apodized acoustic radiation force (ARF) beams in elasticity reconstructions. Bessel offers advantages, such as enlarged depth-of-field (DOF) and high diffractive immunity over conventionally focused pushes. In this study, we demonstrate Bessel ARF's ability to generate broader bandwidths for phase velocity recovery. Performance was evaluated against matched supersonic shear imaging (SSI) experiments on commercial and custom viscous phantoms. Bessel's ability to “heal”, after being disrupted by an obstacle makes it a potential candidate for developing better phase reconstruction in the presence of heterogeneity.