Characterization of vascular strain during in-vitro angioplasty with high-resolution ultrasound speckle tracking.

Background: Ultrasound elasticity imaging provides biomechanical and elastic properties of vascular tissue, with the potential to distinguish between tissue motion and tissue strain. To validate the ability of ultrasound elasticity imaging to predict structurally defined physical changes in tissue, strain measurement patterns during angioplasty in four bovine carotid artery pathology samples were compared to the measured physical characteristics of the tissue specimens.

Methods: Using computational image-processing techniques, the circumferences of each bovine artery specimen were obtained from ultrasound and pathologic data.

Venous elastography: validation of a novel high-resolution ultrasound method for measuring vein compliance using finite element analysis.

Ultrasonography for the noninvasive assessment of tissue properties has enjoyed widespread success. With the growing emphasis in recent years on arteriovenous fistulae (AVFs) for dialysis vascular access in patients with end-stage renal disease, and on reducing AVF failures, there is increasing interest in ultrasound for the preoperative evaluation of the mechanical and elastic properties of arteries and veins. This study used high-resolution ultrasound with phase-sensitive speckle tracking to obtain in vivo vein elasticity measurements during dilation.

High-resolution ultrasound elasticity imaging to evaluate dialysis fistula stenosis.

Accurate, noninvasive characterization of arterial wall mechanics and detection of fibrotic vascular lesions could vastly improve the ability to predict patient response to local treatments such as angioplasty. Current imaging and other techniques for determining wall compliance rely on imprecise or indirect estimates of wall motion. This study used high-resolution ultrasound imaging with phase-sensitive speckle tracking to obtain detailed and direct measurements of arterial stiffness in two subjects with dialysis fistula dysfunction.