Introduction of a Measurement Setup to Monitor the Pressure Applied During Handheld Ultrasound Elastography

Shear-wave elastography may produce misleadingly high values if too much pressure is applied during the imaging process. However, in clinical routine there is presently no way to monitor the pressure applied during the measurements. In this work we introduce a novel measurement setup which can directly be attached to an ultrasonic imaging transducer and allows observation of the applied pressure in real time. The setup supports free-hand imaging according to the clinical standard. We tested the setup by carrying out shear-wave elastography under varying pressures on ex vivo animal tissue. The values increased with pressure, as was expected. Thus, the setup is a possible solution for measuring applied pressure in real time.