Power-law shot noise model for the ultrasound RF echo

Abstract

We model the radio-frequency (RF) ultrasound echo by a shot noise process with narrow-band power-law filter function. As a consequence, the in-phase and quadrature components of the return signal are shown to exhibit 1/f/sup /spl beta// type spectral behavior. The envelope also exhibits this type of spectral behavior but with a different exponent. The model parameters, namely the rate of the point process and the power-law exponent, are related to tissue density and attenuation, respectively. Since these tissue characteristics change due to disease, estimates of the model parameters are investigated as potential tissue characterization features. We validate our claims based on clinical ultrasound images.