Development of ultrasound-based integrated techniques for biomechanical and bioacoustical characterization of tissue

乳腺癌和前列腺癌分别是女性和男性确诊的最常见的癌症形式。早期诊断和预后对这些癌症患者至关重要；早期诊断可以考虑更多的治疗选择，而早期预后可以促进患者个体化有效的治疗调整。肿瘤的形成和退化往往会改变组织的组成和微结构，从而改变其生物力学和生物声学特性。因此，允许对整个乳腺/前列腺内的组织生物力学和生物声学特性进行体积和同时量化的新型成像技术可能有助于高灵敏度癌症患者的早期诊断和预后。*这项研究计划的主要目标是在一个基于超声的综合框架内开发新技术，以非侵入性的方式表征乳腺和前列腺组织的生物力学和生物声学特性。具体地说，我们的短期目标是设计、开发和评估用于全乳腺/前列腺的3D超声弹性成像和定量超声成像的新技术，以同时获得组织生物力学和生物声学特性的测量结果。利用超声作为采集原始数据的成像手段，我们提出的框架不仅具有成像速度快和空间分辨率高的优点，而且具有非侵入性、廉价和便携的优点。该计划中开发的技术将通过计算机模拟进行评估，随后将对几个专门为乳房或前列腺癌设计的具有不同特征的组织模拟模型进行全面研究。*长期而言，我们的目标是通过超声表征各种正常和异常组织类型，包括疾病不同阶段的健康组织和癌症组织，以及对抗癌治疗反应发展的不同阶段。不同组织特性的同时表征使我们能够在细胞和组织水平上从不同的角度研究肿瘤的形成和退化过程。这种多视角的研究可以更好地了解肿瘤形成和退化所涉及的不同生物物理机制，以及这些机制可能相互影响的情况。我们期望不同组织特征的综合量化所提供的互补信息将增加癌症诊断和预后应用中的敏感性、特异性和稳健性。因此，拟议的框架最终可以促进乳腺癌和前列腺癌的早期检测，并允许在治疗开始后快速评估治疗反应。**

Breast and prostate cancers are the most frequent form of cancers diagnosed in women and men, respectively. Early diagnosis and prognosis are crucial for these cancer patients; with early diagnosis more therapeutics options can be considered whereas with early prognosis effective therapy adjustments can be facilitated for the patients on an individual basis. Tumour formation and its degeneration in response to treatment frequently alter tissue composition and microstructures, and consequently its biomechanical and bioacoustical characteristics. Therefore novel imaging technologies that permit volumetric and simultaneous quantification of tissue biomechanical and bioacoustical properties within the whole breast/prostate can potentially facilitate early diagnosis and prognosis for cancer patients with a high sensitivity.***The overarching goal of this research program is to develop novel techniques within an integrated ultrasound-based framework to characterize biomechanical and bioacoustical properties of tissue in breast and prostate non-invasively. Specifically, our short-term objective is to design, develop and evaluate novel techniques for 3D ultrasound elastography and quantitative ultrasound imaging of whole breast/prostate to derive measures of tissue biomechanical and bioacoustical properties concurrently. Utilizing ultrasound as the imaging modality to collect raw data, our proposed framework has the advantage of being non-invasive, inexpensive and portable, in addition to having rapid imaging speed with high spatial resolution. The techniques developed in this program will be evaluated using computer simulations, followed by comprehensive studies on several tissue-mimicking phantoms with different characteristics designed specifically for breast or prostate.***Over the long-term, we aim to ultrasonically characterize various normal and abnormal tissue types including healthy and cancerous tissues at different stages of disease, and at different stages of response development to anti-cancer therapies. A simultaneous characterization of different tissue properties enables us to investigate tumour formation and degeneration process from various points of view at cellular and tissue levels. Such a multi-view investigation can provide better insight into the different biophysical mechanisms involved in both tumour formation and degeneration, and the possible mutual impacts of such mechanisms on each other. We expect the complementary information provided by an integrated quantification of different tissue characteristics will increase the sensitivity, specificity and robustness in cancer diagnosis and prognosis applications. The proposed framework, therefore, can eventually facilitate breast and prostate cancer detection at early stages and permit therapy response evaluation rapidly after the start of a treatment.**