Modeling the ultrasound backscattered signal using α-stable distributions

The tissue is modeled as a collection of point scatterers embedded in a uniform medium. Drawing parallels from the modeling of radar returns we show that under certain assumptions the backscattered ultrasound rf signal follows a symmetric α-stable distribution. The parameter α is shown to be related to the tissue density and attenuation. Based on real breast data we verify the theoretically derived model, and demonstrate that model parameters can be used to track tissue structure changes inside the tissue