A robust phase zero estimator for ultrasonic elastography using quality-guided seeding strategy

Ultrasonic elastography is an imaging technique of obtaining tissue relative stiffness information. This imaging modality has been shown to be useful in different clinical applications such as tumor detection. Many algorithms for elastography have been presented recently; However, most of them are either inefficient for real-time or not robust for general clinical applications. In this paper we develop a new strain imaging technique named robust phase zero(RPZ) which can obtain robust motion tracking and improve image quality without a loss of real time. This technique mainly includes using 2-D complex cross-correlation technique, conducting quality-guided seeding strategy and correcting displacement field by displacement location estimation. Both simulation and phantom experiments show that the RPZ can suppress error propagation and improve elastogram SNRe. The experiment results also validate that the proposed technique is a robust and efficient approach for strain imaging.