Volumetric ultrasound imaging: modeling of waveform inversion

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is widely used in medicine and nondestructive testing. Medical ultrasound volumetric imaging can be considered as a competitive method to X-ray CT and MRI. Recent results in breast ultrasound tomography provide spatial distribution of sound speed and attenuation coefficient based on inverse problem solution in frequency domain. Breast tissue can be characterized as relatively homogeneous medium with possible number of small diagnostically important target inhomogeneities (lesions). This paper is focused on numerical model of complex structure with objects of different sizes and properties that can be met in medicine or in various industrial or scientific cases. High resolution ultrasound imaging is sensitive to a number of effects such as reverberation, diffraction and attenuation that can degrade image quality and cause the artifacts. Those effects are investigated and eliminated by iterative waveform inversion performed in time domain for volumetric visualization of objects’ structure and acoustic properties.