Assessing cross-sectional elasticity map by dynamic imaging acoustic waves with phase sensitive optical coherence tomography

In this paper, we introduced the combined acoustical and optical method for imaging the propagating shear waves and mapping the shear modulus with a high resolution that is comparable to optical coherence tomography (OCT). The mechanical waves propagation is dynamically imaged with phase-sensitive OCT (PhS-OCT) with an equivalent frame rate of ∼47 kHz. The 2-D elastography image is retrieved from measuring the shear wave velocity in the imaging region. The quantitative accuracy of this method is examined by validating experiments on agar phantoms.