Premium
Parametric Imaging of Rat Mammary Tumors In Vivo for the Purposes of Tissue Characterization
Author(s) -
Oelze Michael L.,
Zachary James F.,
O'Brien William D.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of ultrasound in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 91
eISSN - 1550-9613
pISSN - 0278-4297
DOI - 10.7863/jum.2002.21.11.1201
Subject(s) - parametric statistics , medicine , in vivo , biomedical engineering , backscatter (email) , pixel , pathology , characterization (materials science) , ultrasonic sensor , radiology , nuclear medicine , optics , biology , physics , mathematics , statistics , telecommunications , microbiology and biotechnology , computer science , wireless
Objective . To estimate the average scatterer properties from ultrasonic backscatter in tissues for evaluating differences between neoplastic and healthy tissues. Methods . Parametric images of 8 retired breeder rats in which spontaneous mammary tumors had developed were created by superimposing color‐coded pixels related to the estimated average scatterer properties on conventional gray scale B‐mode images. Results . The images showed a distinct difference between the tumors and surrounding healthy tissues. Analysis of the average scatterer diameters and acoustic concentrations showed a statistically significant difference ( P < .05) between estimates inside and outside the tumors for most of the cases. Scatterer sizes inside the tumors were on average 30% larger than scatterer sizes in surrounding normal tissues. A feature analysis plot showed that there was a distinct difference between results obtained inside and outside the tumors. Conclusions . Parametric imaging that uses estimates of scatterer properties in tissues may lead to detection and characterization (diagnosis) of diseased tissues on conventional sonographic scanning systems.