Systems and methods for detecting tissue and shear waves within the tissue

A method for detecting presence of shear waves within liver tissue of a patient, the method comprising:

• exciting an abdominal region of the patient with one or more exciters to induce propagation of shear waves within the liver tissue by vibrating the abdominal region with the one or more exciters;
• while exciting the abdominal region, acquiring a plurality of ultrasound images of the abdominal region with an ultrasonic transducer acoustically coupled to the patient;
• processing the acquired plurality of ultrasound images to determine characteristics of the shear waves;
• displaying at least some of the acquired plurality of ultrasound images on a display;
• and
• displaying on the display a visual indicator representing a measure of how well the acquired plurality of ultrasound images capture the liver tissue within the abdominal region and a quality measure of shear waves traveling through the liver tissue, the visual indicator determined at least partially from:
• a first image mask indicating which pixels of the acquired plurality of ultrasound images represent the liver tissue, the first image mask generated by inputting one or more of the acquired plurality of ultrasound images into a first machine learning model trained to segment pixels of the one or more ultrasound images inputted into the first machine learning model into at least a first group corresponding to liver tissue and a second group corresponding to tissue other than liver tissue;
• and
• a second image mask indicating which pixels of the acquired plurality of ultrasound images represent shear waves usable to determine an elasticity property of the liver tissue, the second mask generated by inputting one or more of the acquired plurality of ultrasound images and shear wave data corresponding to the shear waves travelling through the liver tissue into a second machine learning model trained to identify shear waves usable in a method of elastography of liver tissue to determine the elasticity property of the liver tissue.