Using Strain Estimation to Improve Detection of Tumors in Ultrasonographic Images

Abstract

Ultrasound imaging is a diagnostic imaging technique based on the application of ultrasound. It is used to see internal body structures such as tendons, muscles, joints, vessels and internal organs. Its aim is often to find a source of a disease or to exclude any pathology. However, in order to gain more valuable information from the image, more processing needs to be done on the images themselves. One of these is strain calculation from the image. Pressure is applied to the area from which the image is derived and the behavior of the tissues in response to various amounts of pressure is observed. There are various methods to calculate the strain from an image. We propose a new method which makes use of Kalman filter for the strain estimation. From the motion vector of the tissues deformation, estimated using Kalman filter, we can classify whether the tissue exhibits cancerous behavior or it is a normal tissue.