Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoicho, Inage, Chiba, 2638522, Japan.
J Med Ultrason (2001). 2021 Oct;48(4):391-402. doi: 10.1007/s10396-021-01139-6. Epub 2021 Oct 20.
In the field of clinical ultrasound, the full digitalization of diagnostic equipment in the 2000s enabled the technological development of quantitative ultrasound (QUS), followed by multiple diagnostic technologies that have been put into practical use in recent years. In QUS, tissue characteristics are quantified and parameters are calculated by analyzing the radiofrequency (RF) echo signals returning to the transducer. However, the physical properties (and pathological level structure) of the biological tissues responsible for the imaging features and QUS parameters have not been sufficiently verified as there are various conditions for observing living tissue with ultrasound and inevitable discrepancies between theoretical and actual measurements. A major issue of QUS in clinical application is that the evaluation results depend on the acquisition conditions of the RF echo signal as the source of the image information, and also vary according to the model of the diagnostic device. In this paper, typical examples of QUS techniques for evaluating attenuation, speed of sound, amplitude envelope characteristics, and backscatter coefficient in living tissues are introduced. Exemplary basic research and clinical applications related to these technologies, and initiatives currently being undertaken to establish the QUS method as a true tissue characterization technology, are also discussed.
在临床超声领域，21 世纪诊断设备的全数字化推动了定量超声（QUS）技术的发展，随后近年来出现了多种实用的诊断技术。在 QUS 中，通过分析返回到换能器的射频（RF）回波信号来量化组织特征并计算参数。然而，负责成像特征和 QUS 参数的生物组织的物理特性（和病理水平结构）尚未得到充分验证，因为用超声观察活组织有各种条件，并且理论和实际测量之间不可避免地存在差异。QUS 在临床应用中的一个主要问题是，评估结果取决于作为图像信息源的 RF 回波信号的采集条件，并且还根据诊断设备的模型而变化。本文介绍了用于评估活体组织中衰减、声速、幅度包络特征和背向散射系数的 QUS 技术的典型示例。还讨论了与这些技术相关的典型基础研究和临床应用，以及目前为将 QUS 方法确立为真正的组织特征描述技术而开展的工作。
