TY - JOUR
T1 - Ultrasound Attenuation Estimation in Harmonic Imaging for Robust Fatty Liver Detection
AU - Gong, Ping
AU - Zhou, Chenyun
AU - Song, Pengfei
AU - Huang, Chengwu
AU - Lok, U. Wai
AU - Tang, Shanshan
AU - Watt, Kymberly
AU - Callstrom, Matthew
AU - Chen, Shigao
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to Ms. Jill Weston for her efforts in patient recruitment. The study was partially supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases under Award Nos. R21 DK121943 and R01 DK106957.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine & Biology
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Accurate detection of liver steatosis is important for liver disease management. Ultrasound attenuation coefficient estimation (ACE) has great potential in quantifying liver fat content. The commonly used ACE methods (e.g., spectral shift methods, reference phantom methods) assume linear tissue response to ultrasound and were developed in fundamental imaging. However, fundamental imaging may be vulnerable to reverberation clutters introduced by the body wall. The clutters superimposed on liver echoes may bias the attenuation estimation. Here we propose a new ACE technique, the reference frequency method (RFM), in harmonic imaging to mitigate the reverberation bias. The accuracy of harmonic RFM was validated through a phantom study. In a pilot patient study, harmonic RFM performed more robustly in vivo compared with fundamental RFM, illustrating the potential of ACE in harmonic imaging.
AB - Accurate detection of liver steatosis is important for liver disease management. Ultrasound attenuation coefficient estimation (ACE) has great potential in quantifying liver fat content. The commonly used ACE methods (e.g., spectral shift methods, reference phantom methods) assume linear tissue response to ultrasound and were developed in fundamental imaging. However, fundamental imaging may be vulnerable to reverberation clutters introduced by the body wall. The clutters superimposed on liver echoes may bias the attenuation estimation. Here we propose a new ACE technique, the reference frequency method (RFM), in harmonic imaging to mitigate the reverberation bias. The accuracy of harmonic RFM was validated through a phantom study. In a pilot patient study, harmonic RFM performed more robustly in vivo compared with fundamental RFM, illustrating the potential of ACE in harmonic imaging.
KW - Fatty liver detection
KW - Harmonic imaging
KW - Ultrasound attenuation estimation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089135705&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2020.07.006
DO - 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2020.07.006
M3 - Article
C2 - 32773254
AN - SCOPUS:85089135705
SN - 0301-5629
VL - 46
SP - 3080
EP - 3087
JO - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
JF - Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology
IS - 11
ER -