Exploring Tissue Characterization by Temperature-Dependent Changes on Ultrasound Backscattered Energy, a Computer Simulation

Ultrasound imaging is non-invasive, relatively cheap, flexible and allows real-time inspection. However, it has some disadvantages, such as the moderate resolution and the low image contrast that greatly limits the image quality comparing to other techniques such as magnetic resonance or computed tomography imaging. This fact has lead in the last years to develop methods in an effort to provide traditional ultrasound images with better quality and amount of information. Literature reports monotonic changes in the backscattered energy (CBE) with the increasing of medium temperature. These changes are characteristics of the type of scatterers present in the medium. This work is a computer simulation to study the possibility to classify tissues non-invasively by monitoring the temperature dependent CBE. The behavior of ultrasound signals backscattered by media composed by two types of scatterers (aqueous and lipid) were analyzed. It was possible to distinguish different monotonic changes for both types of scatterers. Using simulated B-mode images, it was possible to identify the lipid and aqueous scattering regions by monitoring CBE changes with temperature, suggesting that CBE can be used to characterize medianon-invasively.