Frequency Diversity in Breast Ultrasound Tomography

摘要

The development of ultrasound tomography for the detection of breast cancer could have a major impact on the effectiveness of current diagnostic tools. Here, the potential of ultrasound tomography is investigated by means of a new generation of toroidal ultrasound arrays that can measure both the signals reflected and transmitted through human breast, simultaneously. Experiments performed on phantoms and human breast in vivo are used to compare continuous wave (CW) insonification versus wideband (WB) excitation. It is shown that while transmission diffraction tomography has little benefit from WB excitation, reflection tomography is greatly improved due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of reflection measurements.