I am interested in intracapsular prostatic tissue pressure in BPH, but would like to avoid direct pressure measurement with invasive probes. Could US or MR measures of elastic recoil act as a proxy for tissue pressure? Is there any established relationship, either linear or geometric?
I am not sure if this is the right answer for you but you might be able to use some of the information to get the answer you are looking for.
Several years ago, at Southampton , UK, I wanted to know if MR can be used to find a measure of pressure within the tissue. I tried several experiments, one seemed to show some promise and some "interesting" results.
I put a small onion inside a pneumatic cuff so I can apply an external pressure to it and then placed these inside a MR scanner. Using diffusion weighted imaging, we could see, in the images, differences appearing between the layers when the cuff was inflated as opposed to when it was not. At the time my interest was in the intervertebral discs and I thought an onion would be similar to the annulus fibrosus of the disc.
Our colleagues in the applied mathematics Department made an effort and developed some equations for going from image parameters to pressures. However, this did not progress any further because of lack of resources.
I hope this is of help but if you wish to discuss it more then don't hesitate to contact me directly.
We have studied something similar in the content of how hepatic pressure impacts liver stiffness measurements: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23726184
The boundary condition of the organ (i.e., its ability to expand under increased pressue) can be play a significant role in the liver, but we have not studied this in the context of prostate: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22170769
We do a lot of prostate stiffness imaging too, but have not explored your specific problem: http://kathynightingalelab.pratt.duke.edu/arfi_prostate_imaging
Or choose probably simple method - shear wave elastography, a sysytem produced as Aixplorer (France). I use it in many research - see my publications.
@Pawel:
Even if using the Aixplorer you'd get "only" the elasticity values, not the pressure.
As far as I know the relationship of the measured elasticity and the applied pressure is not investigated yet.
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