Clinical test of RULES (RULES: radiofrequency ultrasonic local estimators)

An echographic method for differentiating pathological regions in biological tissue was proposed previously (Masotti, L. et al., Proc. IEEE Ultrason. Symp., p.1030-3, 2003). The method, named RULES (Biagi, E. et al., Italian Patent FI2003A000254, 2003; Italian Patent FI2002A34, 2002; European Patent 03425118.1, 2003; US Patent 10/383674, 2003), is based on radiofrequency (RF) echographic signal processing. It permits spectral parameters related to the organization and mechanical properties of investigated tissue to be extracted. Spectral images are produced through a processing procedure, based on the discrete wavelet packet transform. A hardware-software platform, FEMMINA (fast echographic multiparameter multi image novel apparatus) (Scabia, M. et al., IEEE Trans. UFFC, vol.49, no.10, p.1444-51, 2002), for real-time signal and image processing was employed in order to test the diagnostic applicability of the method. The results for breast tumor detection and characterization are presented together with the results from a clinical investigation on the prostate, where the RULES features are employed for localizing pathological zones in order to guide bioptical sampling.