Ultrasonic measurement of Young's modulus in tissues by overtones estimation in broadband multi-pulse wall echoes: An example in arterial tubular phantom

For getting reliable measurements of the arteries state, by a non-invasive via, to prevent dangerous vascular events (heart attacks, atheromas, cerebral strokes, etc.), ultrasonic tools must be used. Nevertheless, the conventional echographic equipment gives a poor spatial resolution (several hundreds of micron), clearly insufficient to study the arterial elastic properties. In this paper, the possibility of performing a spectral study of ultrasonic echoes coming from arterial walls, is analyzed, with the aim of seeing viability of achieving a much better estimation of the arterial elasticity, respecting to previous ultrasonic tools proposed with this aim. A comparison will be made between preliminary results obtained with our new proposal and with the better classical procedure for elastic measurements: the cross-correlation based techniques. Results suggest that our hypothesis can constitute a promising via to attain a non-invasive diagnostic of the arterial state with high resolution, by the measurement of its Young's elastic modulus.