A new approach towards ultrasonic transmission tomography with a standard ultrasound system

The capability of ultrasound transmission tomography to reconstruct acoustic parameters of proven histological relevance like acoustic speed and attenuation has been established over the past few decades by several researchers. The approach taken so far was a fully custom designed transmission tomography system which is a considerably multifaceted venture. The outcome of the earlier research proved the feasibility of the concept but fell short of the clinical requirements due to its inadequate spatial resolution and reconstruction accuracy on one hand and its experimental nature on the other hand. The major consideration behind the novel approach presented here is to make use of a commercially available ultrasound system and to supplement it with an add-on module, the latter being designed to extend the function of the former to realize a transmission ultrasound mode. The ultrasound transmission data of an object, when acquired from multiple directions, allows spatially resolved tomographic reconstruction of parameters like acoustic speed and acoustic attenuation. The use of a standard ultrasound system makes the acquisition of transmission as well as echo data of the whole object possible; the latter allows a further processing for three dimensional rendering of the echosonographic image, compounding and tissue characterization based on multiple parameters.