Grant: Idea to Innovation

Vibro-elastography (VE) involves applying a vibration to tissue with a specially designed vibrator and imaging the internal motion of the tissue to determine how stiff and how viscous tissue is. There is a vast literature on the correlation of mechanical properties of tissue with pathology. Vibro-elastography can be thought of as a form of remote objective palpation. Our goal is to develop a vibro-elastography system and evaluate it in a small patient study to determine the relationship between elasticity, viscosity and cancerous breast masses. The immediate goal is to determine whether vibro-elastography can supplement the information provided by conventional ultrasound used to guide a needle toward a suspicious region for biopsy. The proposed technology involves the design and development of a hand held actuator that holds an ultrasound transducer and the development of a GUI to control the motion, as well as the associated signal processing algorithms to determine tissue motion and mechanical parameters from the tissue motion. Existing algorithms developed in our group will be improved and made to run in real-time, so that the medical professional who uses the system can scan a patient and superimpose on the standard image an image of tissue elasticity and viscosity. The system will be evaluated and tuned via a small patient study.