Ultrasonic breast imaging using a wave-equation migration method

Reflection imaging has the potential to produce higher-resolution breast images than transmission tomography; however, the current clinical reflection imaging technique yields poor-quality breast images due to speckle. We present a new ultrasonic breast imaging method for obtaining high-resolution and clear breast images using ultrasonic reflection data acquired by a new ultrasonic scanning device that provides a better illumination of targets of interest than the clinical B-scan. The new imaging method is based on the solution of the wave equation in Cartesian coordinates and is implemented using Fast Fourier Transform algorithms. We apply the new ultrasonic breast imaging method to two ultrasonic data sets obtained using an experimental ultrasound scanner recently developed by the Karmanos Cancer Institute. One data set was acquired for a "cyst" phantom using 360 transmitter positions and 321 receiver positions along a 20-cm diameter ring. Another data set was collected with 180 transmitter positions and 1601 receiver positions along a 30-cm diameter ring with the breast specimen located at the center of the ring. We report on the breast imaging results for these two data sets using the new breast imaging method. The results demonstrate that the wave-equation-based ultrasonic breast imaging has the potential to produce high-resolution breast images.