Abstract
BackgroundIn breast ultrasound elastography, tissues displacements estimation is obtained through a technique that follows the evolution of tissues under stress. However, during the acquisition of B-mode images, tissue displacements are often contaminated with multiplicative noise caused by changes in the speckle pattern in the tissue. Thus, the application of monogenic signal technique on the B-mode image in order to estimate displacement tissue, result in a presence of amplified noise in the deformation tissue image, which severely obscures the useful information. In this paper, we propose a new method based on the monogenic features, that is to improve the old monogenic signal (OMS) technique by improving the filtering step, so that the use of an effective denoising technique is enough to ensure a good estimation of displacement tissue. Our proposed method is based on the use of a robust filtering technique combined with the monogenic model.MethodsTwo models of phantom elasticity are used in our test validation sold by CIRS company. In-vivo testing was also performed on the sets of clinical B-mode images to 20 patients including malignant breast tumors. Shrinkage wavelets has been used to eliminate the noise according to the threshold, then a guided filter is introduced to completely filter the image, the monogenic model is used after excerpting the image feature and estimating analytically the displacement tissue.ResultsAccurate and excellent displacement estimation for breast tissue was observed in proposed method results. By adapting our proposed approach to breast B-mode images, we have shown that it demonstrated a higher performance for displacement estimation; it gives better values in term of standard deviation, higher contrast to noise ratio, greater peak signal-to-noise ratio, excellent structural similarity and much faster speed than OMS and B-spline techniques. The results of the proposed model are encouraging, allowing quick and reliable estimations.ConclusionAlthough the proposed approach is used in ultrasound domains, it has never been used in the estimation of the breast tissue displacement. In this context, our proposed approach could be a powerful diagnostic tool to be used in breast displacement estimation in ultrasound elastography.
Highlights
In breast ultrasound elastography, tissues displacements estimation is obtained through a technique that follows the evolution of tissues under stress
Soft biological phantom designed for elastography We implemented the proposed method using Matlab software (The MathWorks, software Matlab, Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz), we tested our method on two models of phantom elasticity sold by the company CIRS, the first phantom contains 10 and 20 mm diameter spheres of varying hardness relative to the background material
According to the experimental results presented in “Soft biological phantom designed for elastography” and “In-vivo breast images” sections, we can analyze the breast tissue displacement estimation improvement based on the quantitative indicators
Summary
Tissues displacements estimation is obtained through a technique that follows the evolution of tissues under stress. Ultrasound elastography has developed to characterize the viscoelastic properties of soft tissues This imaging method is promising to characterize pathologies such as carcinomas in the breast, that present a greater elasticity than the surrounding tissues [1]. Ultrasound elastography has a purpose to offer the tools allowing to doctors to make the best decisions suited to the pathologies in terms of diagnosis, detection or therapy This technique makes it possible to quantify the mechanical properties of soft tissues by ultrasonic medical imaging [2]. By palpation, doctors evaluate the hardness of the tissues and evaluate its mechanical properties, like the elasticity In this context the so-called static elastography was developed: imaging the internal deformation of the tissues under stress by ultrasound imaging [3]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
