Bidimensional Analysis of Reverberant Shear Wave Elastography with multiple aleatory mini-surface sources: A simulation study

Reverberant shear wave elastography (R-SWE) is a novel technique that takes advantage of reflected waves, applying multiple vibration sources near the region of interest, in order to create a diffuse field. Different studies show encouraging results assuming a full development of the desired field. However, the presence of the optimal diffuse field it is not guaranteed. Moreover, previous studies have performed numerical simulations and phantom experiments, considering the reverberant field generation through the summation of plane shear waves propagating with random amplitude, direction and phase. In contrast, these assumption is not accurate, since physical experiments could be performed using normal load sources with a reduce contact surface, propagating spherical shear waves. This work is based on a simulation study with four different scenarios with aleatory mini-surface sources considering their position, degree of similarity with theoretical models and shear wave speed (SWS) estimation. The results suggest that similar SWS maps can be reconstructed independently of the range of sources used. Furthermore, there is a significant bias (around 25%) for SWS estimation obtained by curve fitting estimation since this technique is optimized for plane waves.