In breast elastography, breast tissues usually undergo large compressions resulting in significant geometric and structural changes, and consequently nonlinear mechanical behavior. In this study, an elastography technique is presented where parameters characterizing tissue nonlinear behavior is reconstructed. Such parameters can be used for tumor tissue classification. To model the nonlinear behavior, tissues are treated as hyperelastic materials. The proposed technique uses a constrained iterative inversion method to reconstruct the tissue hyperelastic parameters. The reconstruction technique uses a nonlinear finite element (FE) model for solving the forward problem. In this research, we applied Yeoh and Polynomial models to model the tissue hyperelasticity. To mimic the breast geometry, we used a computational phantom, which comprises of a hemisphere connected to a cylinder. This phantom consists of two types of soft tissue to mimic adipose and fibroglandular tissues and a tumor. Simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed method in reconstructing the hyperelastic parameters of the tumor tissue.

Date Published: 12 March 2008
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 6916, Medical Imaging 2008: Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images, 69161C (12 March 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.770971

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6916:
Medical Imaging 2008: Physiology, Function, and Structure from Medical Images
Xiaoping P. Hu; Anne V. Clough, Editor(s)