Tissue Hard Inclusion Detection Using Motion Visualization-Based Approach

In the traditional strain imaging of the medical Ultrasound imaging, user could see the stiffness of the tissue as a gay scale image. In this paper, we present a motion visualization based method that can detect hard inclusions in the tissue. In this algorithm, the phase-zero method is used to get the motion vector field; and the compounding algorithm which combines LIC and a "hardness image" obtained by the vector field is applied to show the motion and hardness in different tissue. The experiment results demonstrate that the image can show not only the direction and the length of the motion displacements of different tissue, but also the hard inclusions in the tissue as the traditional strain image shows. Thus the clinician could locate hard inclusion without making false judgment though considering motion pattern near the "hard" regions.