Magnetic resonance elastography with twin pneumatic drivers for wave compensation

Abstract

MR Elastography is a new technique using conventional MRI system to assess the elastic properties of tissues. When using pneumatic driver, usually one driver was put at one place of tissue. But the shear wave generated by one pneumatic driver cannot illuminate the large area due to the attenuation. So we use two pneumatic drivers driven synchronously to generate interference shear wave in our experiments. The results from the phantom study show the interference wave pattern generated by the twin pneumatic drivers can compensate the attenuation of the shear wave when propagating in phantom. Also, a finite element modeling was used to simulate twin pneumatic driver datasets. It is hoped that by twin pneumatic drivers, we can illuminate the whole brain; the liver and large areas in-vivo. Further study will be conducted with the twin pneumatic drivers in ex-vivo and invivo studies. © 2007 IEEE.