High definition ultrasound of the breast

We propose to develop high definition ultrasound (HD-US) based on a hemispherical synthetic aperture and backscattered sonic waves. This configuration will produce direct three-dimensional maps of ultrasound reflectivity of breast tissues and will display higher signal-to-noise, reduced speckle, and greater spatial resolution compared to ultrasound arrays based on linear or curved planar sampling apertures. Our prototype hemispherical array consists of four interdigitated sub-arrays, each having 128 discrete elements. Currently, this array is used to capture 3D photoacoustic images of the whole breast using a spiral scanning strategy to increase the field of view sufficiently to perform whole-breast screening—photoacoustic mammography (PAM). We will add a multiplexed pulser, pulse sequencer, and T/R switches to capture ultrasound reflectivity data sufficient to form a 3D ultrasound image using the same reconstruction strategy used in PAM. Full 3D image acquisition will take 1.7 min, the same as currently ...