Ultrasound Attenuation Estimation in Soft Tissue Using the Entropy Difference of Pulsed Echoes Between Two Adjacent Envelope Segments

Abstract

Among several parameters in ultrasonic tissue characterization(UTC), attenuation has gained the most attention since it provides valuable information in clinical diagnosis and in quantitative B-scan imaging. Although attenuation is intrinsically defined by way of transmission measurement, it can be estimated from analysis of the backscattered echo waveform. But, because of the random spatial variation in the backscattered signal amplitude, the estimator variance becomes very large, making it difficult to estimate the attenuation slope from the backscattered ultrasound signal.