Ultrasound elasticity imaging of thyroid using analytic minimization

Pathological changes are associated with changes in the mechanical properties of tissue. Thus, the elasticity of soft tissues is of great significance to disease diagnosis. Due to the particular position of the thyroid, most conventional imaging examination methods could not directly provide mechanical properties. Ultrasound elasticity imaging shows the abnormal of the thyroid with a strain map and thus has great clinical value in diagnosis of benign and malignant thyroid nodules. In this study, we applied an algorithm of analytic minimizing (AM) with a cost function using dynamic programming (DP), and a polynomial fitting method to produce the strain map. The preliminary result of this real-time imaging method is reported in this study.