SHORT TIME SPECTRAL FEATURE MAPPING - A DIAGNOSTICAL AID FOR MEDICAL ULTRASOUND.

Abstract

A commercial medical ultrasound scanner is interfaced to the signal processing facility, which provides on line acquisition of RF ultrasound echoes with 12. 3 MHz sampling rate. The experimental fast signal processor extracts short time spectral information from the acquired RF signal and displays it as an image of tissue cross-section. The time domain rather than the frequency domain is used for spectral estimation. The implemented algorithm is based on digital recursive filtering of incoming RF data. Spectral feature maps of liver tissue are expected to be a useful aid in early cancer detection.