Expediting Image Acquisition in Reflection Ultrasound Computed Tomography

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Ultrasound Technology

Background:

• Reflection ultrasound computed tomography (RUCT) offers superior image quality compared to conventional pulse-echo ultrasound by mitigating artifacts like speckle and user variability.
• Current RUCT systems require a high number of transducer elements due to small interelement pitch, leading to increased complexity, cost, and slower imaging speeds.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate acquisition schemes for RUCT using a reduced number of transmit/receive elements.
• To assess the impact of element size and sparse acquisition strategies on RUCT performance.

Main Methods:

• Investigated the influence of element size in transmission and reception within a ring array geometry.
• Assessed a sparse acquisition approach using a subset of transducer elements.
• Evaluated performance in phantoms and in vivo mouse experiments.

Main Results:

• Larger element sizes preserve contrast and resolution at the center of the field of view (FOV).
• A reduced number of elements leads to a uniform loss of contrast and resolution across the entire FOV.
• Tradeoffs between FOV, contrast-to-noise ratio, and temporal/spatial resolutions were quantified.

Conclusions:

• Optimized hardware and acquisition strategies can enable RUCT with fewer elements.
• This research facilitates the development of more affordable and widely adoptable RUCT imaging systems.