Quantitative ultrasound techniques for assessing thermal ablation: Measurement of the backscatter coefficient from ex vivo human liver

BackgroundUnderstanding the changes occurring in biological tissue during thermal ablation is at the heart of many current challenges in both therapy and medical imaging research.PurposeThe objective of this work is to quantitatively interpret the scattering response of human liver samples, before and after thermal ablation. We report acoustic measurements performed involving n = 21 human liver samples. Thermal ablation is achieved at temperatures between 45 and 80 & DEG;C and quantification of the irreversible changes in acoustic attenuation and Backscattering Coefficient (BSC) is reported, with a particular attention to the latter.MethodsBoth attenuation coefficient and BSCs were measured in the frequency range from 10 to 52 MHz. Scans were performed before heating and after cooling down. Attenuation coefficients were calculated using spectral difference method and BSC estimated using the reference phantom method.ResultsStrong increases of attenuation coefficients and BSCs with heating temperature were observed. Quantitative ultrasonic parameters obtained with the polydisperse structure factor model (poly-SFM)are compared to histological observations and seen to be close to hepatocyte mean diameter (HMD).ConclusionsThe results presented in this study provide a description of the impact of thermal ablation in human liver tissue on acoustic attenuation and the BSC. For the first time, quantitative agreement between the Effective Scatterer Diameter (ESD) estimated from BSC and HMD was shown, highlighting the important role of cellular network in the scattering response of the medium. This core result is an important step toward the determination of the nature of scattering sources in biological tissues.