Ultrasound Transmission Tomography Imaging of Structure of Breast Elastography Phantom Compared to US, CT and MRI (original) (raw)
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Journal of Medical Imaging, 2015
The elastic properties of tissue are related to tissue composition and pathological changes. It has been observed that many pathological processes increase the elastic modulus of soft tissue compared to normal. Ultrasound compression elastography is a method of characterization of elastic properties that has been the focus of many research efforts in the last two decades. In medical radiology, compression elastography is provided as an additional tool with ultrasound B-mode in the existing scanners, and the combined features of elastography and echography act as a promising diagnostic method in breast cancer detection. However, the full capability of the ultrasound elastography technique together with B-mode has not been utilized by novice radiologists due to the nonavailability of suitable, appropriately designed tissue-mimicking phantoms. Since different commercially available ultrasound elastographic scanners follow their own unique protocols, training novice radiologists is becoming cumbersome. The main focus of this work is to develop a tissue-like agar-based phantom, which mimics breast tissue with common abnormal lesions like fibroadenoma and invasive ductal carcinoma in a clinically perceived way and compares the sonographic and elastographic appearances using different commercially available systems. In addition, the developed phantoms are simulated using the finite-element method, and ideal strain images are generated. Strain images from experiment and simulation are compared based on image contrast parameters, namely contrast transfer efficiency (CTE) and observed strain, and they are in good agreement. The strain image contrast of malignant inclusions is significantly improved compared to benign inclusions, and the trend of CTE is similar for all elastographic scanners under investigation.
Breast ultrasound imaging phantom to mimic malign lesion characteristics
Physics Procedia, 2010
Ultrasound (US) phantoms are used to simulate the main acoustic properties of human soft tissues and are usually applied in guided biopsy training and equipment calibration. In this work it is presented an ultrasound phantom that mimics breast lesions with irregular edge, which is a typical feature related to malignancy. The phantom matrix was made of a mixture of water, agar, glycerine and graphite and PVC powders and the lesions were of silicon and polyacrylamide. The mimicking properties were US attenuation, propagation speed and density. The images obtained were visually compatible to malignant and benign lesions and are meant to be used as references for evaluation of segmentation algorithms for image processing.
Computerized medical imaging and graphics : the official journal of the Computerized Medical Imaging Society, 2015
Nowadays, in the era of common computerization, transmission and reflection methods are intensively developed in addition to improving classical ultrasound methods (US) for imaging of tissue structure, in particular ultrasound transmission tomography UTT (analogous to computed tomography CT which uses X-rays) and reflection tomography URT (based on the synthetic aperture method used in radar imaging techniques). This paper presents and analyses the results of ultrasound transmission tomography imaging of the internal structure of the female breast biopsy phantom CIRS Model 052A and the results of the ultrasound reflection tomography imaging of a wire sample. Imaging was performed using a multi-modal ultrasound computerized tomography system developed with the participation of a private investor. The results were compared with the results of imaging obtained using dual energy CT, MR mammography and conventional US method. The obtained results indicate that the developed UTT and URT m...
2006 IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium, 2006
Elastography holds great promises for the additional characterization of lesions especially in the domain of breast cancer diagnosis. Most ultrasound based approaches have so far been limited to a one dimensional (1D) or at most two dimensional (2D) displacement estimation in one plane. This leads for the general case to sparse data which cannot be used to solve the full three dimensional (3D) wave equation in an unbiased manner. For instance contributions from the compressional wave cannot be removed via application of the curl operator. In order to overcome this limitation we developed an ultrasound based elastography system which uses the concept of computed tomography for data acquisition in combination with 2D vector displacement estimation within the plane of the ultrasound beam. The vector displacement estimation is achieved using the concept of adaptive subapertures during the receive beamforming process. The object of interest is scanned using a conventional ultrasonic probe (4 MHz, 128 elements) from different directions on a circular orbit. The transducer is translated perpendicular to the orbit (~10 times) for each angle which leads to several block datasets (~30 blocks) each containing 2D displacement information. Thereby, the displacement of each voxel within the object is measured several times from different directions. This provides high resolution volumic 3D displacement fields after regridding each dataset from polar to Cartesian coordinates. The data acquisition system is contained within a water tank underneath a standard breast biopsy table. This enables in vivo measurements with the patient in prone position. Thereby, the 3D acquisition as already developed in the area of Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE), is brought to the ultrasonic field. Initial phantom experiments were conducted with steady state mechanical excitation at 150 Hz. Inclusions are clearly visible in the complex shear modulus as reconstructed from inverting the full 3D wave equation. Taking benefit of the ultrafast acquisition speed of our ultrasound system, the proposed method allows to measure volumic datasets within clinically acceptable time. The method provides for each voxel of the 3D volume the frequency dependence of the complex shear modulus which in turn is linked to the underlying rheology of the material. This represents the proof of concept for a spectroscopic approach of elastography suitable for clinical application. The system enables the study of rheological properties of tumors which should further extend the diagnostic gain of elastography.
Ultrasound elastography: How can it help in differentiating breast lesions?
The Egyptian Journal of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, 2018
Introduction: Elastography is considered a non-invasive imaging modality which determines the tumors according to their stiffness. Strain images representing the stiffness of the lesions compared to that of the surrounding normal tissue. Purpose: To prospectively evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the real-time sonoelastography together with B-mode US for distinguishing benign from malignant breast lesions. Methods: The study was conducted on 80 patients, each patient was subjected to complete history taking, thorough clinical examination. All patients had conventional US and elastography using Hitachi 7.5 MHz linear probe (Hitachi hi vision avirus ultrasound), while only in 68 patients mammography was done. Results: Among the 80 patients, sensitivity and specificity of the elastography test of breast lesions according to the elastography score were 80% and 80.95% respectively, while sensitivity and specificity of conventional B mode US were 80% and 76% respectively and the combined B mode US and US elastography showed higher sensitivity and specificity of 86.6% and 90.4% respectively. Conclusion: Elastography is a non-invasive imaging technique which is done in the same session of ultrasound in an attempt to increase and improve the accuracy of diagnostic efficiency of ultrasound.
Novel Ultrasound Elastography Imaging System for Breast Cancer Assessment
2020
Most conventional methods o f breast cancer screening such as X-ray, Ultrasound (US) and MRI have some issues ranging from weaknesses associated with tumour detection or classification to high cost or excessive time of image acquisition and reconstruction. Elastography is a noninvasive technique to visualize suspicious areas in soft tissues such as the breast, prostate and myocardium using tissue stiffness as image contrast mechanism. In this study, a breast Elastography system based on US imaging is proposed. This technique is fast, expected to be cost effective and more sensitive and specific compared to conventional US imaging. Unlike current Elastography techniques that image relative elastic modulus, this technique is capable of imaging absolute Young's modulus (YM). In this technique, tissue displacements and surface forces used to mechanically stimulate the tissue are acquired and used as input to reconstruct the tissue YM distribution. For displacements acquisition, two ...
Estimation of Displacement Tissues in Breast Ultrasound Ultrasound Elastography
Journal of Diagnostic Techniques and Biomedical Analysis, 2017
The displacement of mammary tissues in static ultrasound elastography is often contaminated by the speckle noise deteriorating its quality. Several techniques have been developed in this context, in order to treat the noise present in images of breast tissue displacement, the progress of research work in noise processing is always questioned, especially that must be taken into account the trade-off between noise reduction and preservation of breast tissue texture. In this paper, a new strategy has been proposed to reduce speckle noise. The proposed method not only filters the image against noise, but also preserves the details and contours of the tissue texture. The approach developed is based on the coupling between the image reconstructions by filtered back projection (RPF) with an adaptive filter. The proposed model proposed has been validated on an in-vivo database comprising 20 images of the breast tissues displacement. Qualitative and quantitative improvements were noted. By comparing the proposed method with the wavelet technique, we show that it is more efficient in terms of calculating the standard deviation between the pixels (SD), it is better in terms of calculation of the Contrast / Noise ratio (CNR). And is much faster than the wavelet technique. The results of the proposed model are encouraging, and the chosen method is ready to be used in the improvement of images of mammary tissue displacements in ultrasound elastography.
2021
Elastography is a method which determines the stiffness of tissues with the help of ultrasound technology and exhibits more quantitative data according to palpation that made during physical examination. Elastography has relatively entered to routine use in the breast evaluation with imaging techniques. Although palpation has a very long history, elastography has been used since 1990s. Elastography is used as an adjunct to conventional gray scale ultrasound and can identify the stiffness of the tissues non-invasively. Today, it is used as two separate technological modalities: strain elastography and shear wave elastography. The aims of these modalities are to increase the sensitivity of the separation between malignant and benign lesions, reduce the unnecessary biopsy processes and to provide a more accurate Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BIRADS) categorization of the breast lesions. In this article, we aimed to review the clinical utilization and benefits of elastograph...
A 2-D anatomic breast ductal computer phantom for ultrasonic imaging
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 2000
Most breast cancers (85 %) originate from the epithelium and develop first in the ductolobular structures. In screening procedures, the mammary epithelium should therefore be investigated first by performing of an anatomically guided examination. For this purpose (mass screening, surgical guidance), we developed a two-dimensional anatomic phantom corresponding to an axial cross-section of the ductolobular structures, which makes it possible to better understand the interactions between the breast composition and ultrasound. The various constitutive tissues were modeled as a random inhomogeneous continuum with density and sound speed fluctuations. Ultrasonic pulse propagation through the breast computer phantom was simulated using a finite element time domain method (the phantom can be used with other propagation codes). The simulated Ductal Echographic image is compared with the Ductal Tomographic (DT) reconstruction. The preliminary results obtained show that the DT method is more satisfactory in terms of both the contrast and the resolution.
Evaluation of tomosynthesis elastography in a breast-mimicking phantom
European Journal of Radiology, 2012
Objective: To evaluate whether measurement of strain under static compression in tomosynthesis of a breast-mimicking phantom can be used to distinguish tumor-simulating lesions of different elasticities and to compare the results to values predicted by rheometric analysis as well as results of ultrasound elastography. Materials and methods: We prepared three soft breast-mimicking phantoms containing simulated tumors of different elasticities. The phantoms were imaged using a wide angle tomosynthesis system with increasing compression settings ranging from 0 N to 105 N in steps of 15 N. Strain of the inclusions was measured in two planes using a commercially available mammography workstation. The elasticity of the phantom matrix and inclusion material was determined by rheometric analysis. Ultrasound elastography of the inclusions was performed using two different ultrasound elastography algorithms. Results: Strain at maximal compression was 24.4%/24.5% in plane 1/plane 2, respectively, for the soft inclusion, 19.6%/16.9% for the intermediate inclusion, and 6.0%/10.2% for the firm inclusion. The strain ratios predicted by rheometrical testing were 0.41, 0.83 and 1.26 for the soft, intermediate, and firm inclusions, respectively. The strain ratios obtained for the soft, intermediate, and firm inclusions were 0.72 ± 0.13, 1.02 ± 0.21 and 2.67 ± 1.70, respectively for tomosynthesis elastography, 0.91, 1.64 and 2.07, respectively, for ultrasound tissue strain imaging, and 0.97, 2.06 and 2.37, respectively, for ultrasound real-time elastography. Conclusions: Differentiation of tumor-simulating inclusions by elasticity in a breast mimicking phantom may be possible by measuring strain in tomosynthesis. This method may be useful for assessing elasticity of breast lesions tomosynthesis of the breast.