Instrument and Method for Forming Three-Dimensional Ultrasound Images of the Brea

High Definition Ultrasound for Mammography Abstract 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 consistsof 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-breastscreening - PhotoAcoustic Mammography (PAM). In Phase I of this work, 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