Researchers led by Yuan Feng at Shanghai Jiao Tong University have developed a noninvasive method to generate 3D maps of tissue stress using reverberant shear waves, Nature Communications reported on August 11, 2026. The study outlines a technique that processes wave fields captured during magnetic resonance elastography scans.
Conventional magnetic resonance elastography measures tissue stiffness, but it cannot measure internal mechanical stress directly. To bridge this gap, the authors created a physics-informed model that analyzes reverberant shear wave fields. The framework decomposes reverberant waves into anisotropic traveling wave components.
This wave decomposition establishes a direct mathematical relationship between wave speed, polarization, and local tissue stress. The method functions without requiring prior knowledge of wave direction. Before clinical testing, the research team validated the framework using numerical simulations and physical phantom experiments.
Medical teams tested the system on patients diagnosed with meningiomas and pituitary adenomas. The noninvasive imaging generated high-resolution stress maps that aligned with patient anatomy and physiological conditions. Furthermore, measurements taken at the cerebral cortex allowed researchers to estimate intracranial pressure, revealing specific trends linked to patient age and pathology.
The study was submitted on October 7, 2025, accepted on July 28, 2026, and published under an open-access licence. Scientists from Fudan University's Huashan Hospital, Tsinghua University, Tongren Hospital, Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital, and Ruijin Hospital contributed to the research alongside Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Computational work relied on the Siyuan-1 cluster at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Center for High Performance Computing. The project received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant numbers 32322042 and 32271359, the Shanghai 2025 "Pioneer Initiative" Program under grant 25XF3200100, and the Space Application System of China Manned Space Program under grant CMSS-2024-1-A-017.
