Elastography

This article needs more reliable medical references for verification or relies too heavily on primary sources. Please review the contents of the article and add the appropriate references if you can. Unsourced or poorly sourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Elastography" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2018)

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (April 2018)

Elastography
Conventional ultrasonography (lower image) and elastography (supersonic shear imaging; upper image) of papillary thyroid carcinoma, a malignant cancer. The cancer (red) is much stiffer than the healthy tissue.
MeSH	D054459

Elastography is any of a class of medical imaging modalities that map the elastic properties and stiffness of soft tissue.^[1][2] The main idea is that whether the tissue is hard or soft will give diagnostic information about the presence or status of disease. For example, cancerous tumours will often be harder than the surrounding tissue, and diseased livers are stiffer than healthy ones.^[1][2][3][4]

The most prominent techniques use ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to make both the stiffness map and an anatomical image for comparison.^{[citation needed]}