Quantitative Evaluation of Breast Lesion Based on Ultrasound Elastography

Abstract

Quantitative elastography is a non-invasive imaging technique that studies the elastic properties of the tissue when force is applied, and gives quantitative information about it. In this research the present work was performed using static deformation on a breast mimic ultrasound phantom. Strain images are constructed from the measured radio frequency (RF) ultrasound signals. The mean strain is recovered from stiffer segmented lesion and from nearby normal tissue, and then compute strain ratio. The stiffness measurement was used to know whether there are already abnormalities in the breast tissue or not. The strain ratio value is a highly significant quantitative method for evaluating the stiffness degree of the breast mass. The result of calculation shows that the strain ratio was 0.4; which indicates that the lesion has less strain than background strain, moreover indicate there is a potential abnormality exist in the lesion area.