Institut für Radiologie und Kinderradiologie

Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Campus Mitte

Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin

Telephone: +49 30 450 539 078

Email: ledia.lilaj@charite.de

 

Time-harmonic elastography for quantification of tissue pressure

PIs: Fischer, Sack, Hirsch/Jöhrens

Application area: MRI

Modalities: MRI and ultrasound

Background: Elastography is a biomedical imaging technique that visualises the differences in the biomechanical properties of normal and diseased tissues. In this field, several tissues have been analysed and some of them, like, for example, brain or liver tissues, are known to show poroelastic characteristics. Poroelastic models have been used to reconstruct tissue pressure-related parameters from time-harmonic displacement data as measured by Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) in porous phantom materials.

Aim: The aim of this project is the development of elastography methods based on MRE or ultrasound which are sensitive to tissue pressure.

Methods: In a first step, I will develop an appropriate poroelastic phantom for MRE investigations. I will then develop an MRI sequence which allows the separate measurement of fluid and solid displacement data. By this sequence and the selected phantom I will analyse first the “effective medium” displacements, and second, the water and the solid displacements separately. After the phantom study, in vivo experiments will be done in order to assess the technique in the liver or brain imaging.