title: Acoustic backscatter and effective scatterer size estimates using a 2D CMUT transducer.
abstract: Compared to conventional piezoelectric transducers, new capacitive microfabricated ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) technology is expected to offer a broader bandwidth, higher resolution and advanced 3D/4D imaging inherent in a 2D array. For ultrasound scatterer size imaging, a broader frequency range provides more information on frequency-dependent backscatter, and therefore, generally more accurate size estimates. Elevational compounding, which can significantly reduce the large statistical fluctuations associated with parametric imaging, becomes readily available with a 2D array. In this work, we show phantom and in vivo breast tumor scatterer size image results using a prototype 2D CMUT transducer (9 MHz center frequency) attached to a clinical scanner. A uniform phantom with two 1 cm diameter spherical inclusions of slightly smaller scatterer size was submerged in oil and scanned by both the 2D CMUT and a conventional piezoelectric linear array transducer. The attenuation and scatterer sizes of the sample were estimated using a reference phantom method. RF correlation analysis was performed using the data acquired by both transducers. The 2D CMUT results indicate that at a 2 cm depth (near the transmit focus for both transducers) the correlation coefficient reduced to less than 1/e for 0.2 mm lateral or 0.25 mm elevational separation between acoustic scanlines. For the conventional array this level of decorrelation requires a 0.3 mm lateral or 0.75 mm elevational translation. Angular and/or elevational compounding is used to reduce the variance of scatterer size estimates. The 2D array transducer acquired RF signals from 140 planes over a 2.8 cm elevational direction. If no elevational compounding is used, the fractional standard deviation of the size estimates is about 12% of the mean size estimate for both the spherical inclusion and the background. Elevational compounding of 11 adjacent planes reduces it to 7% for both media. Using an experimentally estimated attenuation of 0.6 dB cm(-1) MHz(-1), scatterer size estimates for an in vivo breast tumor also demonstrate improvements using elevational compounding with data from the 2D CMUT transducer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1300 University Avenue, 1530 MSC, Madison, WI 53706, USA. wuliu@stanford.edu
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Zagzebski
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: E L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Madsen
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Varghese
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Kliewer
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Panda
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lowery
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barnes
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D018226:Fibroadenoma / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D014159:Transducers; D014465:Ultrasonics