Preliminary Results on Ultrasonic Attenuation and Power-Law Exponent Imaging

Improving the diagnostic quality of imaging ultrasound can be accomplished by augmenting the displayed B-mode images to also hint on acousto-mechanical tissue properties like speed of sound, mass density, scattering coefficient, and attenuation parameters like power-law prefactor and power-law exponent. The spatial resolution that needs to be attained for imaging these acousto-mechanical properties are related to the typical spatial extend of tissue features of the isonified organs. In case of cancers of the prostate or breast high resolution B-mode ultrasound images can be obtained since features are superficially located and thus allow for higher center frequency transducers with larger relative bandwidths. The parameter estimation ideally should match the B-mode's spatial resolution. We report on preliminary results of jointly estimating the power-law prefactor and the power-law exponent from standard ultrasonic images for typical values of tissue attenuation experienced in the human breast.