Sound-speed and attenuation imaging of breast tissue using waveform tomography of transmission ultrasound data

R. Gerhard Pratt; Lianjie Huang; Neb Duric; Peter Littrup

doi:10.1117/12.708789

19 March 2007 Sound-speed and attenuation imaging of breast tissue using waveform tomography of transmission ultrasound data

R. Gerhard Pratt, Lianjie Huang, Neb Duric, Peter Littrup

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6510, Medical Imaging 2007: Physics of Medical Imaging; 65104S (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.708789
Event: Medical Imaging, 2007, San Diego, CA, United States

Abstract

Waveform tomography results are presented from 800 kHz ultrasound transmission scans of a breast phantom, and from an in vivo ultrasound breast scan: significant improvements are demonstrated in resolution over time-of-flight reconstructions. Quantitative reconstructions of both sound-speed and inelastic attenuation are recovered. The data were acquired in the Computed Ultrasound Risk Evaluation (CURE) system, comprising a 20 cm diameter solid-state ultrasound ring array with 256 active, non-beamforming transducers. Waveform tomography is capable of resolving variations in acoustic properties at sub-wavelength scales. This was verified through comparison of the breast phantom reconstructions with x-ray CT results: the final images resolve variations in sound speed with a spatial resolution close to 2 mm. Waveform tomography overcomes the resolution limit of time-of-flight methods caused by finite frequency (diffraction) effects. The method is a combination of time-of-flight tomography, and 2-D acoustic waveform inversion of the transmission arrivals in ultrasonic data. For selected frequency components of the waveforms, a finite-difference simulation of the visco-acoustic wave equation is used to compute synthetic data in the current model, and the data residuals are formed by subtraction. The residuals are used in an iterative, gradient-based scheme to update the sound-speed and attenuation model to produce a reduced misfit to the data. Computational efficiency is achieved through the use of time-reversal of the data residuals to construct the model updates. Lower frequencies are used first, to establish the long wavelength components of the image, and higher frequencies are introduced later to provide increased resolution.

Citation Download Citation

R. Gerhard Pratt, Lianjie Huang, Neb Duric, and Peter Littrup "Sound-speed and attenuation imaging of breast tissue using waveform tomography of transmission ultrasound data", Proc. SPIE 6510, Medical Imaging 2007: Physics of Medical Imaging, 65104S (19 March 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.708789

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