ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,285,294, issued on April 29, was assigned to SUPERSONIC IMAGINE (Aix en Provence, France).

"Shear wave elastrography method and apparatus for imaging an anisotropic medium" was invented by Jeremy Bercoff (Aix en Provence, France) and Jean-Pierre Henry (Marseilles, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A shear wave elastography method for imaging an observation field in an anisotropic medium, including an initial ultrasonic acquisition step during which initial physical parameters are acquired in at least one region of interest; a spatial characterization step during which a set of spatial characteristics of the anisotropic medium is deter...