Quantitative Ultrasound Differentiates Brain and Brain Tumour Phantoms

The acoustic impedance and attenuation of chicken liver and gizzard muscle were measured over a frequency range of 1-10MHz. The results validated their use as ultrasound phantoms for brain and brain tumour respectively. These tissues were then used as an initial test of whether quantitative ultrasound (QUS) could differentiate between brain and brain tumour tissue-like materials. QUS is a technique which infers information about tissue microstructure, such as effective scatterer diameter (ESD) and acoustic concentration, through the backscattered power spectrum of insonated tissues. The ESD of the brain tumour phantom was significantly higher than that of the healthy brain phantom, (87.3 ± 8.6 μm vs 61.2 ± 5.8 μm). The distinction in scattering properties shows potential to use QUS in soft tissue cancer detection.