Microcalcifications as elastic scatterers under ultrasound

摘要

One of the fundamental limitations of medical ultrasound in thenimaging of the breast is the inability of current practice to reliablynvisualize microcalcifications in the size range of clinical interest.nMicrocalcifications (MCs) are small crystals of calcium phosphates thatnform in human tissue through a number of mechanisms. The size,nmorphology, and distribution of MCs are important indicators in thenmammographic screening for and diagnosis of various carcinomas in thenbreast. The authors are investigating the imaging of MCs undernultrasound in the interest of extending the utility of medicalnultrasound in the breast clinic. They present an analysis of thenacoustic properties of MCs modeled as elastic spheres based on the Farannmodel that considers the predicted complex spectra and spatial coherencenof echoes from MCs. They have found the predictions of the model to bensimilar to ultrasound echoes from suspected MCs in vivo. They alsonpresent breast phase aberration estimates and spatial and frequencyncompounding results based on the echoes from these targets