On the measurement of ultrasound transmission through a penetrable acoustic cone
On the measurement of ultrasound transmission through a penetrable acoustic cone
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可穿透声锥的超声波传输测量
DOI：
10.1117/12.878692
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发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Huthwaite P
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Huthwaite P
乳房超声断层扫描(BUST)目前正在被开发用于癌症的早期检测。整个乳房的机械性能图像是通过浸入水中的乳房传输的超声波信号形成的。这是可能的，因为乳房的存在引起了对超声自由传播的扰动，编码了关于乳房的材料特性的信息。因此，为了获得对胸部的高敏感性，乳房内的内部病变最敏感，这一点至关重要。然而，乳房的形状也会影响微扰，这可能会导致显著的和不希望看到的屈光效果。为了了解乳房形状对超声传输的影响，本文研究了具有类似于乳房组织的特性的锥体的传输。我们表明，根据锥体和换能器的物理性质，可以识别两种传输模式。虽然第一种方法适用于胸部测量，但第二种方法受乳房形状的影响很大，测量结果不可靠，无法进行准确的重建。我们提供了一个物理近似，它描述了第一种状态下的传输，这将有助于未来BUST系统的设计。
Breast ultrasound tomography (BUST) is currently being developed for the early detection of cancer. Images of mechanical properties across the breast are formed using ultrasonic signals transmitted through the breast immersed in water. This is possible because the perturbation to the free propagation of ultrasound induced by the presence of the breast encodes information about the material properties of the breast. To achieve high sensitivity with BUST it is therefore crucial that the perturbation is most sensitive to the internal lesions inside the breast. However, the perturbation is also affected by the shape of the breast which can cause significant and undesired refraction effects. To understand the effect of breast shape on the transmission of ultrasound, this paper investigates transmission through a cone with properties similar to that of breast tissue. We show that it is possible to identify two regimes of transmission depending on the physical properties of the cone and transducers. While the first regime is suitable for BUST measurements, the second regime is highly affected by the breast shape and measurements are not reliable for accurate reconstructions. We provide a physical approximation that describes transmission in the first regime and which will aid the design of future BUST systems.