Ultrasound elastography (or elasticity imaging) is a method that characterizes the tissue mechanical properties with the purpose of aiding the diagnosis of certain pathologies. Many novel clinical applications use the assumption that these tissue properties are changed in the presence of pathological processes. Characterization of tissue mechanical properties is achieved by imaging the response of the tissue to an induced stress or excitation. A plethora of approaches have been used in the scientific community to induce excitation in tissue, which usually require additional tools or devices than are costly. Furthermore these are usually integrated in the imaging pipeline using additional software or hardware for control. An alternative that is simpler, faster to integrate (and low-cost) is proposed in this work, by using readily available smartphones as a source of mechanical excitation. The induced displacements are used to solve the elasticity inverse problem (IP) using a finite element method (FEM) approach. Preliminary elasticity reconstructions of a phantom that mimics tissue are similar to when using a dedicated actuator as means of inducing harmonic displacements, illustrating the feasibility of our low-cost ultrasound elasography approach.

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