Noninvasive ultrasound image guided surface wave method for measuring the wave speed and estimating the elasticity of lungs: A feasibility study

Lung diseases, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), are closely associated with altered lung elastic properties. Pulmonary function testing and imaging are routinely performed for evaluating lung diseases. However, lung compliance, a measure of lung elastic properties, is rarely used in clinic, because it is invasive and provides only a global and arguably biased estimate of lung elastic properties. Current ultrasound methods also cannot be used for imaging lungs because ultrasound cannot penetrate the lung tissue. In this paper, an ultrasound image guided and surface wave based method is proposed to measure regional lung surface wave speed and estimate lung elasticity noninvasively. The method described here was not explored before to the best knowledge of the authors. Experiments in an ex vivo pig lung and an in vivo human lung pilot study are reported. The surface wave speed is measured to be 1.83 ± 0.02 m/s at 100 Hz by ultrasound for the ex vivo pig lung at 3 mmHg pressure, which is validated by an optical measurement. An in vivo human lung pilot experiment measures the surface wave speed to be 2.41 ± 0.33 m/s for the 100 Hz sinusoidal wave at total lung capacity (TLC) and 0.99 ± 0.09 m/s at functional residual capacity (FRC). These values of wave speed fall well within the range of available literature.