Simulation of The Ultrasound Shear Wave Elastography Imaging for The Non-invasive Tissue Characterization

Ultrasound shear wave elastography imaging (USWE) is a new technology that quantifies the mechanical properties of tissue, such as elasticity and viscosity. It has been used to detect tumours in many organs such as the liver, breast, prostate, etc. The simulation of ultrasound elastography is critical for future advancements in the field, particularly, computer-aided diagnostics using elastography methods. Most USWE simulation studies in the literature assume that the tissue is an elastic medium, therefore neglecting the attenuation behaviour of tissues. In this work, an accurate simulation of shear wave propagation in a viscoelastic tissue medium has been done using the k-Wave toolbox in MATLAB. Subsequently, the shear wave speed has been calculated using the time to peak (TTP) method to analyze the propagation of the generated shear waves. The result shows the calculated shear wave speed of the simulated wave has less than 2% error. In addition, the decrease in amplitude of the shear waves has also been observed with the propagation of shear waves, which shows the shear wave attenuation due to the viscoelasticity of the material. The wave dispersion analysis on the generated shear wave from 200 Hz to 2000 Hz shows an increase in the phase velocities with the frequency.