Phase-resolved acoustic radiation force optical coherence elastography.

Many diseases involve changes in the biomechanical properties of tissue, and there is a close correlation between tissue elasticity and pathology. We report on the development of a phase-resolved acoustic radiation force optical coherence elastography method (ARF-OCE) to evaluate the elastic properties of tissue. This method utilizes chirped acoustic radiation force to produce excitation along the sample's axial direction, and it uses phase-resolved optical coherence tomography (OCT) to measure the vibration of the sample. Under 500-Hz square wave modulated ARF signal excitation, phase change maps of tissue mimicking phantoms are generated by the ARF-OCE method, and the resulting Young's modulus ratio is correlated with a standard compression test. The results verify that this technique could efficiently measure sample elastic properties accurately and quantitatively. Furthermore, a three-dimensional ARF-OCE image of the human atherosclerotic coronary artery is obtained. The result indicates that our dynamic phase-resolved ARF-OCE method can delineate tissues with different mechanical properties.