Ultrasonic diffraction tomography by pulse-plane wave: Experimental result by frequency synthesis method

Diffraction tomography is a technique for imaging with acoustic fields in which parameter, such as reflective index, sound velocity, etc., can be mapped from scatter wave resulting from insonifying the object with a plane wave at a single temporal frequency. By solving the direct scattering problem, the scattered field can be presented in term of scattering parameters. Different inversion techniques can be applied to take advantage of the linearization process of the non-linear wave equation describing wave propagation in heterogeneous media under a limited class of scattering. Specifically, when the scattering effect is weak, one can invoke the Born or Rytov approximation and thus derive the generalized Fourier Slice Theorem to reconstruct the cross-section of the insonified object. Although diffraction tomography is a promising technology for medical application as it provides a quantitative ultrasonic image, its realization toward medical use is still far-to-go, and this may be due to the complexity of the hardware involved. In this research we investigate a potential use of diffraction tomography for medical application by using a delicate-designed ultrasonic computerized tomographic system. The contribution of the paper is that we have purposed to Frequency Synthesis Method (FSM) that uses 3 frequency components of the Fourier transform of scattered filed, i.e. the center frequency and the -3 dB from center frequency of both side, to fill Fourier space for the generalized Fourier slice theory. The reconstructed ultrasonic image from such theory provides a very promising result. © 2005 IEEE.