Acoustic Inverse Scattering for Breast Cancer Microcalcification Detection. Addendum.

摘要

An advanced scalar inverse scattering theory developed by Colton, Kirsch, and others in the inverse scattering community can determine the shape of scatterers with size on the order of the wavelength. In addition to size and number, the morphology of breast microcalcifications is an important diagnostic indicator. Our hypothesis was that the linear sampling method could be translated to an acoustic imaging system to detect, localize, and characterize microcalcifications in breast phantoms using data from the far-field scattering measurements. Novel ultrasound image reconstruction methods based on spherical and elliptical Radon transform have been developed. We conclude that inverse scattering algorithms for detecting microcalfications in heterogeneous tissue may be clinically feasible, but for estimating the shape of these microcalcifications the proposed algorithms only appear to work in simple phantoms that do not represent the complexity of biological tissue. The implemented methods were not robust upon the simple introduction of materials that simulate the scattering associated with the effect of cellular structure on biomedical ultrasound. However, detection of microcalcifications is a fairly robust application for inverse scattering.