Diffraction Tomography Breast Imaging System: Patient Image Reconstruction and Analysis

Analysis of patient breast images from a clinical trials series of 25 patients suggest that ultrasound diffraction tomography has the potential for discriminating between different tissue types. On the basis of very limited data, it further appears that image contrast values of malignant lesions provide sufficient discrimination from normal breast tissue to be potentially of diagnostic value. An analysis of tissue scatter amplitude distributions shows some correlation between the nature of the distributions, characterized by a Tissue Index, and predominant breast tissue classifications. Since this is reflective of the strength of scattering, the main utility of this analysis is potentially as an a priori tool for the selection of optimal reconstruction algorithms. The data are not sufficiently specific nor interpretable to be of diagnostic value.