Historical growth of ultrasound elastography and directions for the future

This chapter examines how the field of ultrasound elastography has grown over time. It analyses the publication record using PubMed for the field and focuses at different distinctions and trends. The chapter offers a perspective on future investigations that could be pursued for the use of acoustic radiation force (ARF) for ultrasound elastographic applications. It demonstrates the various techniques employed in the field of elastography and elasticity imaging as a whole. Analysis of the underlying fine structure of the "ultrasound elastography" histogram allows one to see the dynamics of relative contributions of various modalities. In most of the ARF‐based imaging modalities, the ARF is dependent on an absorbing or attenuating tissue. Unfocused beams and focused beams were used in subsequent implementations of a method called comb‐push ultrasound shear elastography, which uses the simultaneous production of many shear waves and then uses directional filtering and correlation‐based techniques to measure shear wave velocity.