Artifacts and artifact reduction in sonoelastography

A technique for reducing vibration artifacts encountered when using pure tone vibration in vibration amplitude sonoelastography is presented. Multi-tone signals were designed to synchronize with the pulse repetition frequency and packet size of the scanner. When applied to phantoms with known uniform elasticity it was found that noise levels using the multi-tone signals were 28 to 35% less than when pure tone vibration was used. Images of a hard phantom lesion made using multi-tone vibration compared favorably with those using pure tone vibration.