Improving Visual Contrast Between Fat and Muscle Tissues in B-Mode Images Using CBE: A Simulation Study

Abstract

Ultrasonic radiation can be used as a non-invasive, ionizing radiation-free, portable and inexpensive imaging technique that allows to acquire images in real time. However, this technique presents some limitations, especially when referring to image quality, for example it is not easy to distinguish some soft tissues. Several methods for improving the visual quality have been developed, which are based, in most of cases, on disturbances of the medium with external stimuli. This work uses the changes in backscattered energy (CBE) to improve the visual difference between the muscle and fat tissue, because some studies show that CBEs calculated from RF signals present different behaviors when scattered by particles with different characteristics. The new image has more visual details when compare with the conventional ultrasound images. Two numerical phantoms were simulated with different kinds of scatterers. Conventional B-mode images were obtained for different temperatures (37 °–40 °C). A new parametric image was proposed by using the angular coefficient of the curve pixel intensity versus temperature, obtained for each pixel. The proposed parametric image was able to enhance the visual contrast between the simulated tissues.