Uniqueness of poroelastic and viscoelastic nonlinear inversion MR elastography at low frequencies

Phys Med Biol. 2019 Mar 27;64(7):075006. doi: 10.1088/1361-6560/ab0a7d.

Abstract

Intrinsic actuation MR elastography (IA-MRE) exploits natural pulsations of the brain as a motion source to estimate mechanical property maps. The low frequency motion of IA-MRE introduces new considerations for inversion algorithms relative to traditional external actuation MRE. Specifically, inertial forces become very small, which leaves low frequency viscoelastic inversions with a non-unique scalar multiplier. Biphasic poroelastic inversions include additional fluid-solid interaction forces to balance the elastic forces, which avoids the non-uniqueness. Analyzing the convergence behavior from different starting values using 1 Hz simulated data, IA-MRE data from a gelatin phantom and in vivo brain IA-MRE data reveal that higher frequency (50 Hz) viscoelastic inversion reaches the correct, unique solution regardless of initial property estimate; whereas, low frequency viscoelastic inversion recovers relative values of shear modulus. In the presence of measurement noise, the non-unique scalar multiplier is determined by the softest material reaching the prescribed lower bound on shear modulus. Poroelastic inversion produces a unique solution at both 50 Hz and 1 Hz; however, hydraulic conductivity must be known or accurately estimated in order to recover quantitatively accurate shear modulus maps at low frequency.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Brain / diagnostic imaging*
  • Brain Mapping / methods*
  • Elasticity Imaging Techniques / methods*
  • Humans
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
  • Phantoms, Imaging*