A MATLAB GUI for the Analysis and Exploration of Signal and Image Data of an Ultrasound Computer Tomograph

At Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, a new imaging system for early diagnosis of breast cancer is currently developed. The 3D Ultrasound Computer Tomography (USCT) is based on approx. 2000 ultrasound transducers which produce 20 GB of raw data consisting of 3.5 mio. A-scans (amplitude scans) for one image. The large number of A-scans, the large amount of data and the complex relationship between raw data and reconstructed image makes analysis, understanding and further development difficult for the scientists and especially for new employees and students. For this reason, an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) was developed using MATLAB. It integrates existent analysis methods and is easily extendable with new functionality via a plugin concept. The software provides several visualization functions for the raw data, the reconstructed 3D images, the USCT aperture and the relationships between them. The software shows the capability of MATLAB as programming language for numerical solutions as well as GUIs and complex software systems. It has a large benefit to the working group by integrating analysis methods and sharing them. The GUI and the visualization of the complex relationships of the USCT reduces the training period for new employees and students.