Keywords:
Tissue characterisation, Education and training, Technology assessment, Diagnostic procedure, Ultrasound-Colour Doppler, Ultrasound, Elastography, Soft tissues / Skin, Musculoskeletal soft tissue, Extremities
Authors:
F. Sandomenico1, G. De Rosa2, O. Catalano1, S. Pizza1, G. Rusconi2, P. Vallone3, S. V. Setola1, F. De Rosa1, A. Petrillo1; 1Naples/IT, 2NAPOLI/IT, 3Naples, italy/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2018/C-2627
Aims and objectives
The objective of this study is to evaluate the elastographic patterns in soft tissue lesions based on elastographic scores (ES) for a benign vs.
malignant differential diagnosis,
in order to determine the diagnostic performance of real-time elastography.
The principle of elastography is that tissue compression produces strain (displacement) within the tissue and that the strain is smaller in harder tissue than in softer tissue.
Therefore,
by measuring the tissue strain induced by compression,
we can estimate tissue hardness,
which may be useful in diagnosing cancers.
Displacement is calculated,
in real-time,
by repeated manual compression to the tissue by using transducer and then converted in overlay of a color map on top of the gay-scale image.
Typically,
red is used to represent softer tissue,
blue represents harder tissue,
and yellow or green represent tissues of intermediate elasticity.
These colors represent the relative hardness of the tissues in the elastogram.