In-vivo Assessing the Age-Related Stiffness of Crystalline Lens in Rabbits by Acoustic Radiation Force based Ultrasound Elastography

The pathological or physiological changes of the crystalline lens directly affect the eye accommodation and transmittance, and then increase the risk of the presbyopia and cataract for people in middle and old age groups. There is no universally accepted quantitative method to measure the lens' mechanical properties in vivo so far. This study aims to investigate the possibility of assessing the age-related stiffness change of crystalline lens acoustic radiation force based ultrasound elastography (ARF-USE) in a rabbit model in vivo. 13 New Zealand white rabbits were divided into 4 groups and fed normally till 60, 90, 120, 150 days old, respectively. An USE platform was built up on the basis of Verasonics (TM) Vantage 256 ultrasound open system. The rabbits were anaesthetized and a liner ultrasound probe (L11-4) was placed on one eye during the experiment. The ARF were produced by the probe to induce a local deformation in rabbit lens. The plane wave imaging was used to detect the lens's local deformation and vibration propagating in the lens. The results show that the group velocities had a strong correlation with day ages (r=0.84, p<1x10(-7)) and weights (r=0.83, p<1x10(-7)). This study verified the correlation between lens' stiffness and age and demonstrated the feasibility of in vivo measurement of lens' mechanical properties based on ARF-USE.