Palpation Imaging

描述（由申请人提供）： 乳腺癌是妇女癌症死亡的第二大原因。预计仅今年美国就有超过20万例新的浸润性乳腺癌病例。预计2002年美国将有近4万名妇女死于乳腺癌。乳房自我检查和临床乳房检查（触诊）是检测乳房异常最常用的诊断工具，大多数乳房异常都是通过触诊发现的。该项目的总体目标是开发工具，以改善乳腺病变的分类，特别是在使用弹性成像的乳房X线摄影致密乳腺中。建议的工作的基础是我们成功的实时实现弹性成像的商业超声扫描仪和乳腺疾病患者的初步体内结果。体外组织的体积弹性特性的测量表明，大多数乳腺组织具有非线性的应力-应变关系，但在癌症中的非线性最高。在我们的初步研究中，我们已经观察到在体内乳腺组织之间的机械应变的相对非线性。为了加强和扩展这项工作，我们提出了以下具体目标：1）通过改进运动跟踪和错误检测和校正来显著提高应变图像序列的质量; 2）通过将应用程序移植到新平台来提高临床系统的数据采集和计算能力以及灵活性3）将压力传感器阵列连接到临床超声系统，以提供数据采集反馈并编码和显示组织的应力-应变关系中的非线性; 4）用模拟数据和人体模型和人体实验测试这些方法; 5）开发工具来教授临床医生用于估计大块材料特性（例如杨氏模量）的标准测量技术，以及如何使这些技术适应于扫描人体。这项工作的结果将是一个临床上有用的工具，用于检查人体组织的机械响应，以及一套培训工具，使熟练的超声临床医生能够有效地学习使用这些新工具。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in women. Over 200,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected in the USA this year alone. It is anticipated that nearly 40,000 women in the USA would die of breast cancer in 2002. Breast self examination and clinical breast examination (palpation) are the most frequently used diagnostic tools for detecting breast abnormalities, and most breast abnormalities are detected with palpation. The overall goal of this project is the development of tools that will improve the classification of breast lesions, particularly in mammographically-dense breasts using elasticity imaging. The basis of the proposed work is our successful real-time implementation of elasticity imaging on a commercially available ultrasound scanner and initial in vivo results on patients with breast disease. Measurements of the bulk elastic properties of in vitro tissues showed that most breast tissues have non-linear stress-strain relationships, but the non-linearity was highest in cancers. We have observed relative non-linearity in mechanical strain among in vivo breast tissue in our preliminary studies. To enhance and extend that work, we propose the following specific aims: 1) significantly improve the quality of strain image sequences through improved motion tracking and error detection and correction; 2) improve the data acquisition and computational capacity and flexibility of the clinical system by porting the application to a new platform (the Siemens Antares); 3) interface a pressure sensor array to the clinical sonography system to provide data acquisition feedback and encode and display the nonlinearity in the stress-strain relationship of tissues; 4) test these methods with simulated data and experiments with phantoms and human subjects; 5) develop tools to teach clinicians the standard measurement techniques for estimating bulk material properties, such as Young's modulus, how to adapt those techniques to scanning the human body. The result of this effort will be a clinically useful tool for examining the mechanical response of human tissues, and a set of training tools to allow the skilled ultrasound clinician to efficiently learn to use these new tools.