Determination of In-Vivo Elastic Properties of Soft Tissue Using Magnetic Resonance Elastography

In-vivo measurement of the elastic properties of soft tissue have been made using a variety of direct techniques, such as indentation probes and rotary shear actuators, but they are unable to access much of the soft tissue of interest. Indirect ultrasonic methods for imaging elastic properties of soft tissue were first introduced about 15 years ago, see Ophir (1991). Although the results of ultrasonic elastography studies have been quite promising, they may not be suited for applications requiring accurate quantification of soft tissue properties. An alternative to ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, has the advantage of enabling precise measurement of all three components of tissue displacement. The reconstruction of elastic properties from the imaged displacement field is called magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), and is the subject of this paper.