A computer simulation study of soft tissue characterization using low-frequency ultrasonic tomography

We investigate the potential of using ultrasonic diffraction tomography technique for characterization of biological tissues. Unlike most of other studies where ultrasonic tomography operates at frequencies higher than 1 MHz, low-frequency tomography uses lower frequencies on the order of 0.3-0.5 MHz. Such a choice is due to low attenuation at these frequencies, resulting in higher precision of input data. In this paper we explore transmission and reflection schemes for both 2D (layer-by-layer) and 3D tomography. We treat inverse tomography problems as coefficient inverse problems for the wave equation. The time-domain algorithms employed for solving the inverse problem of low-frequency tomography focus on the use of GPU clusters. The results obtained show that a spatial resolution of about 2-3 mm can be achieved when operating at the wavelength of about 5 mm even using a stationary 3D scheme with a few fixed sources and no rotating elements. The study primarily focuses on determining the performance limits of ultrasonic tomography devices currently designed for breast cancer diagnosis.