Ultrasound is one of the most popular imaging modalities, utilized in medicine.
Abstract
Ultrasound is one of the most popular imaging modalities, utilized in medicine. Among it’s various applications, it has been used extensively to monitor undefined masses detected in the female breast, while x-ray mammography can not provide definitive conclusions or can not be applied. However common ultrasonic imaging of the breast is carried out manually and is mainly based on the pulse-echo technique. Consequently the information provided is limited and is mostly qualitative.
A special computerized ultrasonic scanner has been developed in the department of Bio-medical engineering. With this system the breast is scanned automatically and the RF signal from both throughout transmitted waves and reflected waves can be obtained. This information can be used to produce various images of the breast, depicting different acoustic properties of the tissue.
The objective of this project, was to prepare a software package for operating this system. This included routines for hardware control and data analysis.
In the begging the system could only produce two pictures while whole the information of the scanning was lost. Moreover, the speed of scanning was slow and these two factors made scanning unpleasant and gave results which were not satisfying
Now there is a graphical interface which enables a convenient and fast operation of the scanner and most important, enables to get the whole samples of the object. Making the communication between the scanner and the sampler better made it possible to get and save the big amounts of information in the computer. This fact enables to scan only once and in faster speed and by this to save the woman unpleasant experience.
Afterwards signal and picture processing can be made.
Implementation and Tools
Most of the software which is related to the hardware control and communication was written in c++ in Borland C. Hardware control and cummunication means:
* Communication between the step motors and the computer
* Communication between the sampler and the computer
Most of the software related to processing the data, was written in Matlab version 5.02.
The scanning system
Throughout transmition
Pulse-Echo
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Dr. Haim Azhari and Gil Kovalski for supervising us in this project and the “Ollendorf Center Research Fund” for supporting this lab and providing us with a suitable environment for developing this project.