Magnetic resonance elastography with guided pressure waves

Marion Tardieu (1) , Najat Salameh (1) , Line Souris (1) , David Rousseau , Laurène Jourdain (1) , Hanadi Skeif (1) , François Prévot (1) , Ludovic de Rochefort (2, 2) , Denis Ducreux (1) , Bruno Louis (3) , Philippe Garteiser (4) , Ralph Sinkus , Luc Darrasse (1) , Marie Poirier-Quinot (1) , Xavier Maître (1)

1 BIOMAPS - LaBoratoire d'Imagerie biOmédicale MultimodAle Paris-Saclay
2 CRMBM - Centre de résonance magnétique biologique et médicale
3 BCR - Biomécanique cellulaire et respiratoire
4 CRI (UMR_S_1149 / ERL_8252 / U1149) - Centre de recherche sur l'Inflammation

Magnetic resonance elastography aims to non-invasively and remotely characterize the mechanical properties of living tissues. To quantitatively and regionally map the shear viscoelastic moduli in vivo, the technique must achieve proper mechanical excitation throughout the targeted tissues. Although it is straightforward, ante manibus, in close organs such as the liver or the breast, which practitioners clinically palpate already, it is somewhat fortunately highly challenging to trick the natural protective barriers of remote organs such as the brain. So far, mechanical waves have been induced in the latter by shaking the surrounding cranial bones. Here, the skull was circumvented by guiding pressure waves inside the subject's buccal cavity so mechanical waves could propagate from within through the brainstem up to the brain. Repeatable, reproducible and robust displacement fields were recorded in phantoms and in vivo by magnetic resonance elastography with guided pressure waves such that quantitative mechanical outcomes were extracted in the human brain.

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

Marion Tardieu, Najat Salameh, Line Souris, David Rousseau, Laurène Jourdain, et al.. Magnetic resonance elastography with guided pressure waves. NMR in Biomedicine, 2022, 35 (7), ⟨10.1002/nbm.4701⟩. ⟨hal-03859757⟩