Abstract #0330

Ehman R, Manduca A, Mariappan Y, Lake D

Magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) requires the application of harmonic mechanical excitation to an object. In some cases, adequate displacement may not be present in certain regions due to attenuation and shadowing effects. Excitation with multiple, phased array drivers can provide more uniform illumination of an object, but the wave field from such driving can be very complex, with interference patterns yielding areas of low amplitude and hence low SNR that can negatively impact inversion algorithms. Spatio-temporal directional filtering can separate interfering waves traveling in different directions so they can be processed separately, and dramatically improve inversion results.