Patent ID: 8403850

Claim:
A method of multidimensional strain imaging comprising the steps of: (a) obtaining a pre-compression and post-compression ultrasonic data set of an imaged object composed of measurements along multiple laterally spaced and mutually non-intersecting axial lines through the imaged object by ultrasound propagating along the multiple axial lines; (b) using a programmed electronic computer executing a program stored in non-transient medium, and receiving the ultrasonic data sets, for each given axial line in the pre-compression ultrasonic data set and for each depth along each given axial line: (i) performing a one dimensional correlation of measurements of the given axial line at a range of depths with measurements at corresponding depths of a corresponding axial line and laterally adjacent axial lines to the corresponding axial line in the post-compression ultrasonic data set; (ii) identifying one of the corresponding axial line and adjacent axial lines in the post-compression ultrasonic data set having maximum correlation with the given axial line and identifying a line peak based on an axial depth and lateral position of that maximum correlation as a line peak; (iii) performing a local multidimensional correlation between the pre-compression and post-compression ultrasonic data sets at points determined from the line peak about the line peak to determine a subsample peak; (iv) determining a displacement vector using the subsample peak; (c) displaying multidimensional strain data based on multiple displacement vectors determined from corresponding subsample peaks for multiple axial lines at a plurality of locations in the imaged object.