An Ultrasonic Imaging for Seminiferous Tubules Beyond the Wavelength Limit

This paper describes an ultrasonic imaging technique for seminiferous tubules in testicle. An image is made by particular frequency data derived by short-time Fourier transform. Thus, the image has particular frequency components. The image indicates an object that has a frequency component being different from others. In our experiment, we employ two kind nylon lines with different diameter as seminiferous tubules. For a performance test, we make a measurement object consisting of the nylon lines. For a phantom test, we make a phantom of a testicle. The phantom consists of a water filled rubber tube including the nylon lines. We scan and acquire ultrasonic reflection wave data of them. Next, we make images of them by our imaging technique. As the results, the image of the object indicated the line depth with high accuracy, and the image of the phantom successfully extracted echoes of two kind lines.