Anisotropic Imaging Of Tumours Using Elastic Wave Signals

In this short paper we show how one may extract elastic properties of materials by probing it with elastic waves and processing the signal that returns (i.e. the scattered waves) in an appropriate way. In particular, we present a linearized inversion scheme to estimate the high–frequency, anisotropic components of the elastic tensor and density (the elastic moduli) in human tissue. For a given configuration source and receiver transducers, we show what combinations of moduli can be determined. Conversely, to estimate moduli in a specified region of the tissue, we derive an algorithm that searches for an optimal configuration of transducer pairs which best resolves the moduli. The ultimate goal of this work is application to biomedical imaging for early detection of tumours.