Abstract
The Nakagami parameter associated with the Nakagami distribution estimated from ultrasonic
backscattered signals reflects the scatterer concentration in a tissue. A nonfocused
transducer does not allow tissue characterization based on the Nakagami parameter.
This paper proposes a new method called the noise-assisted Nakagami parameter based
on empirical mode decomposition of noisy backscattered echoes to allow quantification
of the scatterer concentration based on data obtained using a nonfocused transducer.
To explore the practical feasibility of the proposed method, the current study performed
experiments on phantoms and measurements on rat livers in vitro with and without fibrosis induction. The results show that using a nonfocused transducer
makes it possible to use the noise-assisted Nakagami parameter to classify phantoms
with different scatterer concentrations and different stages of liver fibrosis in
rats more accurately than when using techniques based on the echo intensity and the
conventional Nakagami parameter. However, the conventional Nakagami parameter and
the noise-assisted Nakagami parameter have different meanings: the former represents
the statistics of signals backscattered from unresolvable scatterers, whereas the
latter is associated with stronger resolvable scatterers or local inhomogeneity caused
by scatterer aggregation. (E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected])
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 15, 2009
Accepted:
August 5,
2009
Received in revised form:
July 8,
2009
Received:
December 16,
2008
Identification
Copyright
© 2009 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
