REAL TIME ULTRASOUND ENTROPY-BASED QUANTIFICATION OF FIBROFATTY LIVER DISEASE

 描述（由申请人提供）：本提案中解决的主要问题是开发和评价一种非侵入性超声诊断方法，用于绘制一组独特的定量超声指标，用于肝脏疾病。这些都是预期区分不同的肝脏疾病患者的生理病理肝脏显微解剖与使用传统的超声扫描仪和一种新的信号处理方法。该方法是基于射频信号（RF）处理方案，称为信息理论检测器（ITD），已被证明可以检测肌肉疾病和癌症的病理变化，通过测量选定的信号熵。在超声数据的这种分析中，我们试图描述的基本信息内容和精确的组织内描绘的后向散射的超声数据的散射结构。我们目前的所有结果都是在不需要衰减校正的情况下通过实时算法获得的。熵分析的这些独特属性表明，我们提出的自动化处理将是特别强大的在临床环境中的深层组织的歧视。 最重要的是，这些技术在可从单元件换能器获得的单独射频A线上工作，并且因此可以被转换到临床而不需要相对昂贵的成像系统。由于肝病的患病率随着年龄的增长而增加（例如，非酒精性脂肪肝：儿童中为9.7%，40-59岁人群中为26%），用于肝脏病理诊断的快速，低成本，即时护理设备的可用性将广泛应用于支持老年人的健康和福祉。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The major problem addressed in this proposal is the development and evaluation of a noninvasive ultrasonic diagnostic approach for mapping a set of unique and quantitative ultrasonic metrics for liver disease. These are anticipated to differentiate physiological from pathological liver microanatomy in patients with diverse liver diseases with the use of conventional ultrasound scanners and a novel signal processing methodology. The method is based on radiofrequency signal (RF) processing schemes referred to as information theoretic detectors (ITD's) that have been shown to detect pathological changes in muscle diseases and cancer by measuring selected signal entropies. In this analysis of ultrasound data, we seek to describe the fundamental information content and the exact organization of scattering structures depicted within the backscattered ultrasound data. All of our present results have been obtained without the need for attenuation correction, and by real-time capable algorithms. These unique attributes of entropy analysis suggest that the automated processing we propose would be particularly robust for discrimination of deep tissues in a clinical environment. Most importantly, these techniques work on individual radio frequency A-Lines available from single element transducers and thus may be translated to the clinic without the need for relatively expensive imaging systems. As prevalence of liver disease increases with age (e.g. non alcoholic fatty liver disease: 9.7% among children, 26% among people 40-59 years old) the availability of a rapid, low-cost, point-of-care device for longitudina diagnosis of liver pathologies would find widespread clinical application supporting the health and well-being of older adults.