Angular spatial compounding of diffraction corrected images improves ultrasound attenuation measurements.

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death for women. Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) and ultrasound computed tomography (USCT) are quantitative imaging techniques that have been investigated for management of breast cancer. QUS and USCT can generate ultrasound attenuation images.

Breast Glandular and Ductal Volume Changes during the Menstrual Cycle: A Study in 48 Breasts Using Ultralow-Frequency Transmitted Ultrasound Tomography/Volography.

The aim of this study was to show for the first time that low-frequency 3D-transmitted ultrasound tomography (3D UT, volography) can differentiate breast tissue types using tissue properties, accurately measure glandular and ductal volumes in vivo, and measure variation over time. Data were collected for 400 QT breast scans on 24 women (ages 18-71), including four (4) postmenopausal subjects, 6-10 times over 2+ months of observation. The date of onset of menopause was noted, and the cases were further subdivided into three (3) classes: pre-, post-, and peri-menopausal.

Spectral-based Quantitative Ultrasound Imaging Processing Techniques: Comparisons of RF Versus IQ Approaches.

Quantitative ultrasound (QUS) is an imaging technique which includes spectral-based parameterization. Typical spectral-based parameters include the backscatter coefficient (BSC) and attenuation coefficient slope (ACS). Traditionally, spectral-based QUS relies on the radio frequency (RF) signal to calculate the spectral-based parameters.

Full Wave Inversion and Inverse Scattering in Ultrasound Tomography/Volography.

Ultrasound breast tomography has been around for more than 40 years. Early approaches to reconstruction focused on simple algebraic reconstructions and bent ray techniques. These approaches were not able to provide high-quality and high spatial-resolution images.

Low frequency 3D transmission ultrasound tomography: technical details and clinical implications.

Unlabelled: A novel 3D ultrasound tomographic (3D UT) method (called volography) that creates a speed of sound (SOS) map and a reflection modality that is co-registered are reviewed and shown to be artifact free even in the presence of high contrast and thus shown to be applicable for breast, orthopedic and pediatric clinical use cases. The 3D UT images are almost isotropic with mm resolution and the reflection image is compounded over 360 degrees to create sub-mm resolution in plane.

Methods: The physics of ultrasound scattering requires 3D modeling and the concomitant high computational cost is ameliorated with a bespoke algorithm (paraxial approximation - discussed here) and Nvidia GPUs.