Spectral estimators in elastography.

Like velocity, strain induces a time delay and a time scaling to the received signal. Elastography typically uses time delay techniques to indirectly (i.e. via the displacement estimate) measure tissue strain induced by an applied compression, and considers time scaling as a source of distortion. More recently, we have shown that the time scaling factor can also be spectrally estimated and used as a direct measure of strain. Strain causes a Doppler-like frequency shift and a change in bandwidth of the bandpass power spectrum of the echo signal. Two frequency shift strain estimators are described that have been proven to be more robust but less precise when compared to time delay estimators, both in simulations and experiments. The increased robustness is due to the insensitivity of the spectral techniques to phase decorrelation noise. In this paper we discuss and compare the theoretical and experimental findings obtained with traditional time delay estimators and with the newly proposed spectral methods.