What is Shear Wave Elastography?

Shear wave elastography also known as transient elastography is a new form of ultrasound technology that helps clinicians assess body tissue that may be diseased. Obtaining tissue stiffness measurements have become surprisingly fast and easy with this new expert tool. Its non-invasive which makes it quick and simple for sonographers and nearly painless for the patients.

Shear Wave elastography uses acoustic energy from the ultrasound transducer to automatically and instantaneously produce a numeric measure of stiffness on an absolute scale.

Previous strain elastography technology wasn’t efficient enough as it required clinicians to manually palpate a patient to identify stiff tissue and produced a measure of stiffness relative only to other tissue within the same patient’s body. The technology monitors shear waves propagation and measures its velocity and instantly and continuously displays the results on a 2D real-time, color-coded ultrasound image, with a low speed corresponding to softer tissue and a high speed corresponding to stiffer tissue.

Shear Wave’s power can be used to identify the underlying diseases in liver , breasts and other organs. There may also be some applications in echocardiography. It has become a trusted and proven technology that is helping physicians around the world to better diagnose their patients.