Clinical breast imaging using sound-speed reconstructions of ultrasound tomography data

Abstract

To improve clinical breast imaging, a new ultrasound tomography imaging device (CURE) has been built at the Karmanos Cancer Institute. The ring array of the CURE device records ultrasound transmitted and reflected ultrasound signals simultaneously. We develop a bent-ray tomography algorithm for reconstructing the sound-speed distribution of the breast using time-of-flights of transmitted signals. We study the capability of the algorithm using a breast phantom dataset and over 190 patients' data. Examples are presented to demonstrate the sound-speed reconstructions for different breast types from fatty to dense on the BI-RADS categories 1-4. Our reconstructions show that the mean sound-speed value increases from fatty to dense breasts: 1440.8 m/ s (fatty), 1451.9 m/ s (scattered), 1473.2 m/ s(heterogeneous), and 1505.25 m/ s (dense). This is an important clinical implication of our reconstruction. The mean sound speed can be used for breast density analysis. In addition, the sound-speed reconstruction, in combination with attenuation and reflectivity images, has the potential to improve breast-cancer diagnostic imaging. The breast is not compressed and does not move during the ultrasound scan using the CURE device, stacking 2D slices of ultrasound sound-speed tomography images forms a 3D volumetric view of the whole breast. The 3D image can also be projected into a 2-D "ultrasound mammogram" to visually mimic X-ray mammogram without breast compression and ionizing radiation.