FETD simulation of wave propagation modeling the CARI breast sonography

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death from cancer among women. Both its earlier detection and better treatment have been shown to significantly save lives and reduce high costs. Thus, breast imaging systems must recognize and locate very small lesions. This work is concerned with the finite element time domain (FETD) simulation of ultrasound wave propagation for a recent ultrasound clinical amplitude reconstruction imaging (CARI) technique for the breast tumor detection. The CARI method is especially attractive for detecting cancer surrounded by fatty tissues because they both appear dark in a conventional ultrasound image and makes it hard to recognize the size of the tumor. The mathematical modeling framework is presented. Numerical simulations are performed for a 2D and 3D breast model to assess the sensitivity of the CARI method. 3D simulations confirm the quantitative results obtained for the 2D breast model. Moreover, the study shows the effectiveness of the FETD to simulate the CARI modality. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.