Recent Developments in Spectral-Based Ultrasonic Tissue Characterization

Echographic imaging depicts anatomical structure by displaying the magnitude of the envelope-detected backscattered echoes. However, ultrasonic radiofrequency data contains a richer information content that can be exploited for constructing images of intrinsic tissue properties. In particular, spectral-based ultrasonic tissue characterization techniques allow imaging parameters such as the backscatter coefficient and the attenuation coefficient. Even though this type of analysis has been explored for decades, several challenges ranging from technical algorithmic issues to the lack of widely validated, successful clinical applications have limited efforts directed towards these imaging modalities. In this talk, recent developments are reviewed such as the use of plane wave compounding for improving imaging penetration, the simultaneous estimation of backscatter coefficients and shear wave speed maps with potential to characterize kidney transplants, the estimation of backscatter coefficients from thyroids and cervical nodules, and the use of regularized inversion methods for backscatter and attenuation coefficient imaging