Whitson Hayley M, Rosado-Mendez Ivan M, Hale Jonathan H, Hall Timothy J
Department of Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53705, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2024 Feb 1;155(2):1406-1421. doi: 10.1121/10.0024459.
Quantitative analysis of radio frequency (RF) signals obtained from ultrasound scanners can yield objective parameters that are gaining clinical relevance as imaging biomarkers. These include the backscatter coefficient (BSC) and the effective scatterer diameter (ESD). Biomarker validation is typically performed in phantoms which do not provide the flexibility of systematic variation of scattering properties. Computer simulations, such as those from the ultrasound simulator Field II, can allow more flexibility. However, Field II does not allow simulation of RF data from a distribution of scatterers with finite size. In this work, a simulation method is presented which builds upon previous work by including Faran theory models representative of distributions of scatterer size. These are systematically applied to RF data simulated in Field II. The method is validated by measuring the root mean square error of the estimated BSC and percent bias of the ESD and comparing to experimental results. The results indicate the method accurately simulates distributions of scatterer sizes and provides scattering similar to that seen in data from clinical scanners. Because Field II is widely used by the ultrasound community, this method can be adopted to aid in validation of quantitative ultrasound imaging biomarkers.
对从超声扫描仪获得的射频（RF）信号进行定量分析，可以得出一些客观参数，这些参数作为成像生物标志物正逐渐获得临床相关性。这些参数包括背向散射系数（BSC）和有效散射体直径（ESD）。生物标志物验证通常在体模中进行，而体模无法提供散射特性系统变化的灵活性。计算机模拟，如超声模拟器Field II的模拟，可以提供更大的灵活性。然而，Field II不允许模拟来自具有有限尺寸的散射体分布的RF数据。在这项工作中，提出了一种模拟方法，该方法基于先前的工作，纳入了代表散射体尺寸分布的法朗理论模型。这些模型被系统地应用于在Field II中模拟的RF数据。通过测量估计的BSC的均方根误差和ESD的百分比偏差，并与实验结果进行比较，对该方法进行了验证。结果表明，该方法能够准确模拟散射体尺寸分布，并提供与临床扫描仪数据中所见相似的散射。由于Field II在超声领域被广泛使用，该方法可用于辅助定量超声成像生物标志物的验证。
