A method for experimental characterization of the noise performance of elastographic systems

Characterization of the noise performance of the elastographic system is necessary to evaluate the accuracy and precision of the estimated strain. The elastographic system includes the ultrasonic scanner, the computer controlled compression device and the strain estimation algorithm. In this paper, we present a method of characterizing the elastographic system experimentally using a uniformly elastic homogenous tissue-mimicking phantom. The strain response of the elastographic system is evaluated by characterizing the accuracy and precision of the strain estimates for a large range of input strains. The experimental results obtained follow the theoretical predictions obtained using the Strain Filter (SF) concept for the cross-correlation based strain estimator. In this paper, we illustrate the application of the Experimental Strain Response (ESR) to characterize strain estimation at the focus of the transducer and the axis of symmetry of the phantom.