ULTRASOUND PULSE-ECHO IMAGING USING THE SPLIT-STEP FOURIER PROPAGATOR
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
Ultrasonic reflection imaging has the potential to produce higher image resolution than transmission tomography, but imaging resolution and quality still need to be further improved for early cancer detection and diagnosis. We present an ultrasound reflection image reconstruction method using the split-step Fourier propagator. It is based on recursive inward continuation of ultrasonic wavefields in the frequency-space and frequency-wavenumber domains. The inward continuation within each extrapolation interval consists of two steps. In the first step, a phase-shift term is applied to the data in the frequency-wavenumber domain for propagation in a reference medium. The second step consists of applying another phase-shift term to data in the frequency-space domain to approximately compensate for ultrasonic scattering effects of heterogeneities within the breast. We use synthetic ultrasound pulse-echo data recorded around a ring for heterogeneous, computer-generated numerical breast phantoms to study the imaging capability of the method. The phantoms are derived from an experimental breast phantom and a sound-speed tomography image of an in-vivo ultrasound breast data collected usi ng a ring array. The heterogeneous sound-speed models used for pulse-echo imaging are obtained using a computationally efficient, first-arrival-time (time-of-flight) transmission tomography method. Our studies demonstrate that reflection image reconstruction using the split-step Fourier propagator with heterogeneous sound-speed models significantly improves image quality and resolution. We also numerically verify the spatial sampling criterion of wavefields for a ring transducer array.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 985879
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-07-0701
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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