An application of ultrasonic tissue characterization to the diagnosis of cataract

From therapeutic and pathological points of view, it is important to classify types of cataract and identify their stages. However, standardized criterion for diagnosis has not been established. On the other hand based on the study of tissue characterization which is applied to other clinical fields, the attenuation characteristics of lens is expected to change according to the stage of disease and the type of cataract. In this paper, we tried to measure the attenuation coefficient of lens from echo signals for the pupose of diagnosing the cataract quantitatively and at the early stage. Results show that the attenuation of cataractous lens is larger than that of normal lens and its value differs between the types of cataract, which indicates the utility of tissue characterization in diagnosis of cataract.