A Study of Ultrasonic Wavefront Distortion Compensation
Abstract
High resolution and high contrast ultrasound imaging for early detection of breast lesions is limited by acoustic wavefront distortion which is developed as coherent waves propagate inside the breast tissue. Wavefront distortion causes image degradation. We have developed a novel signal processing technique, called Toward Inverse Filtering (TIF), to compensate such distortion. In vitro one-way distortion compensation has shown that contrast resolution has been improved significantly with TIF. We have applied TIF to two-way pulse-echo imaging data obtained from phantom. Preliminary results have shown that TIF offers more improvement of contrast of low echogenic lesions than existing compensation techniques. In addition to signal processing work, we have fabricated a prototype two-dimensional (2-D) ultrasound array operating at 1 MHz. Two-dimensional array will allow us to implement TIF in 2-D for further contrast improvement and will be used as a tool for clinical studies. In addition to wavefront compensation and array construction work, we have developed a novel method which combines ultrasound and near infrared diffused light to improve lesion detection sensitivity and specificity. This work was not proposed in the original proposal but it is an important discovery along the track of the PI's breast cancer research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA337868
Entities
People
- Qing Zhu
Organizations
- University of Pennsylvania