Quantitative Diagnosis for Liver and Heart Desease Using Ultrasonic RF Images

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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between physical change and echo signal information of tissues with the disease and develop the quantitative diagnosis method of heart and liver diseases. We measured the acoustic characteristics of tissues of heart failure, liver cirrhosis and chronic hepatitis. The acoustic characteristics were different in normal tissue and diseased tissue, and the fiber structure has the characteristic features of sound velocity and attenuation distribution. The analysis of amplitude distribution of RF echo signal was carried out using the digital ultrasonic diagnostic equipment. The probability density functions of echo signal amplitude from the fibrotic tissue are different from the Rayleigh distribution, while the probability density functions of echo signal amplitude from the normal tissue agree approximately with the Rayleigh distribution. It was confirmed that signal amplitude probability density gradually changed from the Rayleigh distribution, as the stage of liver disease progress from the normal to liver cirrhosis. Then we tried to the extract of three-dimensional structure of fibrotic tissues using the statistically processing technique for non-Rayleigh component in echo signal. The extracted information as a non-Rayleigh component increases with the progress of the disease. It seems that the extracted three-dimensional structure corresponds to the fibrous tissues structure.It is found that the RF echo information reflects the change of the tissue characteristics quantitatively. The proposed technique is valid for the quantitative diagnosis of liver and heart diseases.