Global approach for transient shear wave inversion based on the adjoint method: a comprehensive 2D simulation study

Shear wave imaging (SWI) maps soft tissue elasticity by measuring shear wave propagation with ultrafast ultrasound acquisitions (10 000 frames s(-1)). This spatiotemporal data can be used as an input for an inverse problem that determines a shear modulus map. Common inversion methods are local: the shear modulus at each point is calculated based on the values of its neighbour (e.g. time-of-flight, wave equation inversion). However, these approaches are sensitive to the information loss such as noise or the lack of the backscattered signal. In this paper, we evaluate the benefits of a global approach for elasticity inversion using a least-squares formulation, which is derived from full waveform inversion in geophysics known as the adjoint method. We simulate an acoustic waveform in a medium with a soft and a hard lesion. For this initial application, full elastic propagation and viscosity are ignored. We demonstrate that the reconstruction of the shear modulus map is robust with a non-uniform background or in the presence of noise with regularization. Compared to regular local inversions, the global approach leads to an increase of contrast (similar to+3 dB) and a decrease of the quantification error (similar to+2%). We demonstrate that the inversion is reliable in the case when there is no signal measured within the inclusions like hypoechoic lesions which could have an impact on medical diagnosis.