Clinical Application of an Ultrasound Attenuation Coefficient Estimation Technique for Liver Pathology Characterization

Certain diffuse liver diseases, such as hepatitis and cirrhosis, are difficult to diagnose from the information contained in ultrasound images. A signal processing procedure is described which estimated the value of an acoustic attenuation coefficient of the liver in vivo from reflected ultrasound signals. The results of a clinical trial involving 14 patients indicate a correlation between the coefficient values and the liver diseases: inflamed livers produced lower values than cirrhotic livers. A series of 15 examinations on a volunteer indicates that the observed values are repeatable to within the statistical variation predicted by the mathematical model.