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Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) is a phase-contrast-based MRI imaging technique that can directly visualize and quantitatively measure propagating acoustic strain waves in tissue-like materials subjected to harmonic mechanical excitation. The data acquired allows the calculation of local quantitative values of shear modulus and the generation of images that depict tissue elasticity or stiffness. This is significant because palpation, a physical examination that assesses the stiffness of tissue, can be an effective method of detecting tumors, but is restricted to parts of the body that are accessible to the physician's hand. MRE shows promise as a potential technique for 'palpation by imaging', with possible applications in tumor detection (particularly in breast, liver, kidney and prostate), characterization of disease, and assessment of rehabilitation (particularly in muscle). We describe MRE in the context of other recent techniques for imaging elasticity, discuss the processing algorithms for elasticity reconstruction and the issues and assumptions they involve, and present recent ex vivo and in vivo results.

Noninvasive quantitation of the mechanical properties of tissue could improve early detection of pathology. Previously a method for detecting displacement from propagating shear waves using a phase-contrast MRI technique was developed. In this work it is demonstrated how a collection of data representing the full vector displacement field could be used to potentially estimate the full complex stiffness tensor. An algebraic inversion approach useful for piece-wise homogeneous materials is described in detail for the general isotropic case, which is then specialized to incompressible materials as a model for tissue. Results of the inversion approach are presented for simulated and experimental phantom data that show the technique can be used to obtain shear wave-speed and attenuation in regions where there is sufficient signal-to-noise ratio in the displacement and its second spatial derivatives. The sensitivity to noise is higher in the attenuation estimates than the shear wave-speed estimates. Magn Reson Med 45:299-310, 2001., (Copyright 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.)