Shear wave speed estimation through multi-angles normalized cross-correlation

Shear wave elastography is a non-invasive quantitative technique that measures the elastic modulus of tissues, which can provide important diagnostic information. By analyzing a series of IQ/RF images of deformed tissues caused by the propagation of the shear wave, the shear wave speed can be estimated and consequently the elastic modulus can be inferred. In the paper, we propose an updated time-of-flight method to estimate the speed of shear wave through calculating normalized cross-correlation coefficients along multi-angles radial directions on one circle. Our methods are preliminarily verified using three phantom data generated by external continuous harmonic mechanical vibration sources, provided by the Algorithms for Mapping Elastic Modulus (a-MEM) challenge 2024 program. Several metrics are evaluated, such as contrast to noise ratio, edge sharpness, and edge accuracy, to assess the accuracy of the proposed methods. Although not optimal, our method still demonstrates the feasibility of correctly evaluating the shear wave speed and is potentially embedded in ultrasound systems.