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Developing high‐frequency ultrasound tomography for testicular tumor imaging in rats: An in vitro study
Author(s) -
Huang ChihChung,
Chen WeiTsen
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
medical physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.473
H-Index - 180
eISSN - 2473-4209
pISSN - 0094-2405
DOI - 10.1118/1.4852915
Subject(s) - imaging phantom , attenuation , ultrasound , tomography , attenuation coefficient , biomedical engineering , pulse (music) , nuclear medicine , materials science , physics , optics , medicine , acoustics , detector
Purpose: This paper describes a feasibility study for developing a 35‐MHz high‐frequency ultrasound computed‐tomography (HFUCT) system for imaging rat testicles.Methods: The performances of two kinds of HFUCT‐attenuation and sound‐speed UCT‐based on transmission and pulse‐echo modes were investigated in this study. Experiments were carried out using phantoms and actual rat testicles in vitro . HFUCT images were reconstructed using a filtered backprojection algorithm.Results: The phantom experimental results indicated that all types of HFUCT can determine the dimensions of a plastic cylinder with a diameter of 500 μ m. Compared to sound‐speed HFUCT, attenuation HFUCT exhibited a better performance in recognizing a tiny sclerosed region in a gelatin phantom. Therefore, the in vitro testicular experiments were performed using attenuation HFUCT based on transmission and pulse‐echo modes. The experimentally measured attenuation coefficient and sound speed for healthy rat testicles were 2.92 ± 0.25 dB/mm and 1537 ± 25 m/s, respectively.Conclusions: A homogeneous texture was evident for healthy testicles using both modes. An artificial sclerosed tumor could also be clearly observed using two‐ and three‐dimensional attenuation HFUCT in both modes. However, an object artifact was apparent in pulse‐echo mode because of ultrasound beam refraction. All of the obtained experimental results indicate the potential of using HFUCT as a novel tool for monitoring the preclinical responses of testicular tumors in small animals.