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US 2016/0238568 A1Published application
Typing and imaging of biological and non-biological materials using quantitative ultrasound
AssigneeRiverside Research Institute
InventorsErnest J. Feleppa, Jonathan Mamou
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An ultrasonic material-evaluation or classification method using spectral and envelope-statistics variables from backscattered ultrasound echo signals combined with global variables. This classification method can be applied to any organ or tissue among biological materials and any non-biological material that produces backscattered signals as a result of microscopic internal inhomogeneities such as a crystalline structure.
Claims12
A method of classifying non-biological material comprising:
- acquiring ultrasound, pulse-echo, backscattered RF signals from the non-biological material being evaluated;
- computing spectral-variable values from said RF echo signals;
- computing estimates of scatterer properties (such as effective scatterer size, or acoustic concentration) from said spectral-variable values;
- computing additional variable values of the envelope statistics of said RF signals in terms of defined statistical models;
- inputting said spectral-variable values, said scatterer-property-estimate values, and said envelope-statistics variable values into a classifier;
- assigning a classifier-score value to each of a plurality of variable values, wherein each said classifier-score value for each variable-value combination indicates the relative likelihood of a given material property.
3 more elements
A method of classifying biological tissue comprising:
- acquiring ultrasound, pulse-echo, backscattered, RF echo signals from the biological material being evaluated;
- computing spectral-variable values from said RF echo signals;
- computing additional variable values of the envelope statistics of said RF signals in terms of defined statistical models;
- inputting said spectral-variable values, and said envelope-statistics-variable values into a classifier;
- assigning a classifier-score value to each of a plurality of classifier variables, wherein each said property value for each assigned variable indicates the likelihood of a given material property.
2 more elements
A method of classifying material comprising:
- acquiring ultrasound, pulse-echo, backscattered, RF echo signals from the material being evaluated;
- computing spectral-variable values from said RF echo signals;
- computing estimates of scatterer properties (such as effective scatterer size, or acoustic concentration) from said spectral-variable values;
- inputting global-variable values, said spectral-variable values, and said scatterer-property-estimate values into a classifier;
- assigning a classifier-score value to each of a plurality classifier variables wherein each said property value for each assigned variable indicates the relative likelihood of a given material property.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.