Frequency-dependent attenuation reconstruction with an acoustic reflector
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Date
2021-01
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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Abstract
Attenuation of ultrasound waves varies with tissue composition, hence its estimation offers great potential for tissue characterization and diagnosis and staging of pathology. We recently proposed a method that allows to spatially reconstruct the distribution of the overall ultrasound attenuation in tissue based on computed tomography, using reflections from a passive acoustic reflector. This requires a standard ultrasound transducer operating in pulse-echo mode and a calibration protocol using water measurements, thus it can be implemented on conventional ultrasound systems with minor adaptations. Herein, we extend this method by additionally estimating and imaging the frequency-dependent nature of local ultrasound attenuation for the first time. Spatial distributions of attenuation coefficient and exponent are reconstructed, enabling an elaborate and expressive tissue-specific characterization. With simulations, we demonstrate that our proposed method yields a low reconstruction error of 0.04 dB/cm at 1 MHz for attenuation coefficient and 0.08 for the frequency exponent. With tissue-mimicking phantoms and ex-vivo bovine muscle samples, a high reconstruction contrast as well as reproducibility are demonstrated. Attenuation exponents of a gelatin-cellulose mixture and an ex-vivo bovine muscle sample were found to be, respectively, 1.4 and 0.5 on average, consistently from different images of their heterogeneous compositions. Such frequency-dependent parametrization could enable novel imaging and diagnostic techniques, as well as facilitate attenuation compensation of other ultrasound-based imaging techniques. © 2020
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published
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Journal / series
Volume
67
Pages / Article No.
101875
Publisher
Elsevier
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Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Ultrasound; Attenuation; Speed of sound; Computed tomography; Limited angle tomography
Organisational unit
09528 - Göksel, Orçun (ehemalig) / Göksel, Orçun (former)
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Related publications and datasets
References: https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-c-000785060