SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CLASSIFYING AND CHARACTERIZING TISSUES USING FIRST-ORDER AND SECOND-ORDER STATISTICS OF QUANTITATIVE ULTRASOUND PARAMETRIC MAPS

摘要

Systems and methods for classifying tissue using quantitative ultrasound techniques. Parameters are calculated directly from raw echo signal data acquired from a region-of-interest during an ultrasound scan and parametric maps are produced using these parameters. These parameters can be calculated after normalizing the echo signal data using reference data so as to mitigate the effects of variations in instruments settings, ultrasound beam diffraction, and attenuation effects. First-order and second-order statistical measures are computed from these parametric maps, and are used to classify the tissue or tissues in the region-of-interest. Using these systems and methods, tissue can be classified with different levels of classification. For example, a tissue characterized as malignant cancer can additionally be graded (e.g., Grade I, II, or III).

主权项

1. A method for classifying a tissue as being associated with a particular histological state using an ultrasound system, the steps of the method comprising:
a) acquiring ultrasound echo signal data from a region-of-interest that contains the tissue using the ultrasound system; b) producing at least one parametric map from the acquired ultrasound echo signal data, the at least one parametric map having pixel values associated with a parameter computed from the acquired ultrasound echo signal data; c) computing at least one first-order statistical measure of the at least one parametric map; d) computing at least one second-order statistical measure of the at least one parametric map; and e) classifying the tissue as being associated with a particular histological state using the computed at least one first-order statistical measure and the computed at least one second-order statistical measure.