Feasibility Study of Inverse Scattering Breast Scanners

The primary objectives of this proposal are twofold. The first is to investigate the feasibility ofimplementing certain critical areas of the hardware of an ultrasound scanner, which was developed foruse with inverse scattering theory, as VLSI components. The second is to develop calibrationmechanisms for ultrasound inverse scattering tomography of the female breast. Both of these objectiveswill accelerate the process of moving our inverse scattering imaging algorithms, now operating on slowermechanical laboratory scanners, onto an electronic scanning platform that is more suitable for the clinicalenvironment. These objectives shall be accomplished by upgrading an existing prototype ultrasoundscanner which was initially developed to aid our research into inverse scattering tomography as appliedto breast cancer imaging. This scanner, the TechniScan Ultrasound Breast Scanner (TUBS), has suppliedTechniScan with a deeper understanding of some of the technological difficulties which need to beovercome for inverse scattering to work in a clinical environment. In order for TechniScan to proceedwith this development, we believe that it is necessary to retrofit the TUBS with state-of-the-arttechnology. This shall include addition of a higher resolution analog-to-digital converter and atemperature monitor.