Contrast Enhancement for Thermal Acoustic Breast Cancer Imaging via Resonant Stimulation

摘要

This research focuses on developing enhanced contrast thermal acoustic imaging (TAI) technology for the detection of breast cancer by combining amplitude-modulated (AM) electromagnetic (EM) field excitation, resonant acoustic scattering, and advanced signal processing techniques. EM- induced TAI combines the merits of both EM stimulation and ultrasound imaging, while overcoming their respective limitations. While EM-induced TAI possesses great promise, the thermal acoustic signals tend to be weak. However, when the tumor is excited into resonance via EM stimulation, the effective acoustic scattering cross-section may increase by a factor in excess of 100 based on predictions for microsphere-based ultrasound contrast agents. Such an increase would truly be revolutionary, making the EM-induced TAI technology a very promising candidate for routine breast cancer screening. The image formation methods in the existing TAI systems are data-independent and have poor resolution and high sidelobe problems. We devise adaptive image formation algorithms to achieve high resolution and excellent interference and noise suppression capability.