Novel technology of multimodal ultrasound tomography detects breast lesions

Abstract

Objectives: To introduce a new three-dimensional (3D) diagnostic imaging technology, termed "multimodal ultrasonic tomography" (MUT), for the detection of breast cancer without ionising radiation or compression.

Methods: MUT performs 3D tomography of the pendulant breast in a water-bath using transmission ultrasound in a fixed-coordinate system. Specialised electronic hardware and signal processing algorithms are used to construct multimodal images for each coronal slice, corresponding to measurements of refractivity and frequency-dependent attenuation and dispersion. In-plane pixel size is 0.25 mm × 0.25 mm and the inter-slice interval can vary from 1 to 4 mm, depending on clinical requirements. MUT imaging was performed on 25 patients ("off-label" use for research purposes only), presenting lesions with sizes >10 mm. Histopathology of biopsy samples, obtained from all patients, were used to evaluate the MUT outcomes.

Results: All lesions (21 malignant and four benign) were clearly identified on the MUT images and correctly classified into benign and malignant based on their respective multimodal information. Malignant lesions generally exhibited higher values of refractivity and frequency-dependent attenuation and dispersion.

Conclusion: Initial clinical results confirmed the ability of MUT to detect and differentiate all suspicious lesions with sizes >10 mm discernible in mammograms of 25 female patients.