The estimation of shear wave propagation in ultrasound elasticity imaging by using BP neural network

Ultrasound elasticity imaging is now widely used in clinical diagnosis, in which impulsive acoustic radiation force imaging shows its superiority. It transmits transient and high energy beam to the tissue and produces mechanical displacements and shear wave. The Young’s modulus of the tissue is closely related with the speed of shear wave propagation. Time-to-peak displacement (TTP) method is very useful in calculating the shear wave speed, but it has the disadvantage of less precise in low frame rate condition. In this paper, BP neural network is employed to improve the TTP method in the reconstruction of shear wave propagation, and more accurate value of Young’s modulus can be obtained. And then, factors that can influence the accuracy of the BP neural network method are discussed. The experimental results show that the proposed method can get more accurate results overall.