Paul M. Meaney

A clinical prototype for active microwave imaging of the breast

Despite its recognized value in detecting and characterizing breast disease, X-ray mammography has important limitations that motivate the quest for alternatives to augment the diagnostic tools that are currently available to the radiologist. The rationale for pursuing electromagnetic methods is strong given the data in the literature, which show that the electromagnetic properties of breast malignancy are significantly different than normal in the high megahertz to low gigahertz spectral range, microwave illumination can effectively penetrate the breast at these frequencies, and the breast is a small readily accessible tissue volume, making it an ideal site for deploying advanced near-field imaging concepts that exploit model-based image reconstruction methodology. In this paper a clinical prototype of a microwave imaging system, which actively illuminates the breast with a 16-element transceiving monopole antenna array in the 300-1000 MHz range, is reported. Microwave exams have been delivered to five women through a water-coupled interface to the pendant breast with the participant positioned prone on an examination table. This configuration has been found to be a practical, comfortable approach to microwave breast imaging. Sessions lasted 10-15 min per breast and included full tomographic data acquisition at seven different array heights beginning at the chest wall and moving anteriorly toward the nipple for seven different frequencies at each array position. This clinical experience appears to be the first report of active near-field microwave imaging of the breast and is certainly the first attempt to exploit model-based image reconstructions from in vivo breast data in order to convert the measured microwave signals into spatial maps of electrical permittivity and conductivity. While clearly preliminary, the results are encouraging and have supplied some interesting findings. Specifically, it appears that the average relative permittivity of the breast as a whole correlates with radiologic breast density categorization and may be considerably higher than previously published values, which have been based on ex vivo tissue specimens.

Evaluation of an iterative reconstruction method for quantitative elastography

This paper describes an inverse reconstruction technique based on a modified Newton Raphson iterative scheme and the finite element method, which has been developed for computing the spatial distribution of Youngs modulus from within soft tissues. Computer simulations were conducted to determine the relative merits of reconstructing tissue elasticity using knowledge of (a) known displacement boundary conditions (DBC), and (b) known stress boundary conditions (SBC). The results demonstrated that computing Youngs modulus using knowledge of SBC allows accurate quantification of Youngs modulus. However, the quality of the images produced using this reconstruction approach was dependent on the Youngs modulus distribution assumed at the start of the reconstruction procedure. Computing Youngs modulus from known DBC provided relative estimates of tissue elasticity which, despite the disadvantage of not being able to accurately quantify Youngs modulus, formed images that were generally superior in quality to those produced using the known SBC, and were not affected by the trial solution. The results of preliminary experiments on phantoms demonstrated that this reconstruction technique is capable in practice of improving the fidelity of tissue elasticity images, reducing the artefacts otherwise present in strain images, and recovering Youngs modulus images that possess excellent spatial and contrast resolution.

Nonlinear Microwave Imaging for Breast-Cancer Screening Using Gauss–Newton's Method and the CGLS Inversion Algorithm

Breast-cancer screening using microwave imaging is emerging as a new promising technique as a supplement to X-ray mammography. To create tomographic images from microwave measurements, it is necessary to solve a nonlinear inversion problem, for which an algorithm based on the iterative Gauss-Newton method has been developed at Dartmouth College. This algorithm determines the update values at each iteration by solving the set of normal equations of the problem using the Tikhonov algorithm. In this paper, a new algorithm for determining the iteration update values in the Gauss-Newton algorithm is presented which is based on the conjugate gradient least squares (CGLS) algorithm. The iterative CGLS algorithm is capable of solving the update problem by operating on just the Jacobian and the regularizing effects of the algorithm can easily be controlled by adjusting the number of iterations. The new algorithm is compared to the Gauss-Newton algorithm with Tikhonov regularization and is shown to reconstruct images of similar quality using fewer iterations.

Fundamental limitations of noninvasive temperature imaging by means of ultrasound echo strain estimation

Ultrasonic estimation of temperature-induced echo strain has been suggested as a means of predicting the location of thermal lesions formed by focused ultrasound (US) surgery before treatment. Preliminary investigations of this technique have produced optimistic results because they were carried out with rubber phantoms and used room temperature, rather than body temperature, as the baseline. The objective of the present study was to determine, through modelling, the likely feasibility of using ultrasonic temperature imaging to detect and localise the focal region of the heating beam for a medium with a realistic temperature-dependence of sound speed subjected to a realistic temperature rise. We determined the minimum ultrasonic signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required to visualise the heated region for liver of varying fat content. Due to the small (0.5%) change in sound speed at the focus, the threshold SNR for normal liver (low fat content) was found to be at least 20 dB. This implies that temperature imaging in this tissue type will only be feasible if the effects of electronic noise can be minimised and if other sources of noise, such as cardiac-induced motion, do not substantially reduce the visibility of the focal region. For liver of intermediate fat content, the heated region could not be visualised even when the echo data were noise-free. Tissues with a very high fat content are likely to represent the most favourable conditions for ultrasonic temperature imaging.

Fast 3-D Tomographic Microwave Imaging for Breast Cancer Detection

Microwave breast imaging (using electromagnetic waves of frequencies around 1 GHz) has mostly remained at the research level for the past decade, gaining little clinical acceptance. The major hurdles limiting patient use are both at the hardware level (challenges in collecting accurate and noncorrupted data) and software level (often plagued by unrealistic reconstruction times in the tens of hours). In this paper we report improvements that address both issues. First, the hardware is able to measure signals down to levels compatible with sub-centimeter image resolution while keeping an exam time under 2 min. Second, the software overcomes the enormous time burden and produces similarly accurate images in less than 20 min. The combination of the new hardware and software allows us to produce and report here the first clinical 3-D microwave tomographic images of the breast. Two clinical examples are selected out of 400+ exams conducted at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (Lebanon, NH). The first example demonstrates the potential usefulness of our system for breast cancer screening while the second example focuses on therapy monitoring.

Microwave imaging for tissue assessment: initial evaluation in multitarget tissue-equivalent phantoms

A prototype microwave imaging system is evaluated for its ability to recover two-dimensional (2-D) electrical property distributions under transverse magnetic (TM) illumination using multitarget tissue equivalent phantoms. Experiments conducted in a surrounding lossy saline tank, demonstrate that simultaneous recovery of both the real and imaginary components of the electrical property distribution is possible using absolute imaging procedures over a frequency range of 300-700 MHz. Further, image reconstructions of embedded tissue-equivalent targets are found to be quantitative not only with respect to geometrical factors such as object size and location but also electrical composition. Quantitative assessments based on full-width half-height criteria reveal that errors in diameter estimates of reconstructed targets are less than 10 mm in all cases, whereas, positioning errors are less than 1 mm in single object experiments but degrade to 4-10 mm when multiple targets are present. Recovery of actual electrical properties is found to be frequency dependent for the real and imaginary components with background values being typically within 10-20% of their correct size and embedded object having similar accuracies as a percentage of the electrical contrast, although errors as high as 50% can occur. The quantitative evaluation of imaging performance has revealed potential advantages in a two-tiered receiver antenna configuration whose measured field values are more sensitive to target region changes than the typical tomographic type of approach which uses reception sites around the full target region perimeter. This measurement strategy has important implications for both the image reconstruction algorithm where there is a premium on minimizing problem size without sacrificing image quality and the hardware system design which seeks to economize on the amount of measured data required for quantitative image reconstruction while maximizing its sensitivity to target perturbations.

Microwave image reconstruction utilizing log-magnitude and unwrapped phase to improve high-contrast object recovery

Reconstructing images of large high-contrast objects with microwave methods has proved difficult. Successful images have generally been obtained by using a priori information to constrain the image reconstruction to recover the correct electromagnetic property distribution. In these situations, the measured electric field phases as a function of receiver position around the periphery of the imaging field-of-view vary rapidly often undergoing changes of greater than /spl pi/ radians especially when the object contrast and illumination frequency increase. Here, the authors introduce a modified form of a Maxwell equation model-based image reconstruction algorithm which directly incorporates log-magnitude and phase of the measured electric field data. By doing so, measured phase variation can be unwrapped and distributed over more than one Rieman sheet in the complex plane. Simulation studies and microwave imaging experiments demonstrate that significant image quality enhancements occur with this approach for large high-contrast objects. Simple strategies for visualizing and unwrapping phase values as a function of the transmitter and receiver positions within our microwave imaging array are described. Metrics of the degree of phase variation expressed in terms of the amount and extent of phase wrapping are defined and found to be figures-of-merit which estimate when it is critical to deploy the new image reconstruction approach. In these cases, the new algorithm recovers high-quality images without resorting to the use of a priori information on object contrast and/or size as previously required.

Near-field microwave imaging of biologically-based materials using a monopole transceiver system

A prototype monopole-transceiver microwave imaging system has been implemented, and initial single and multitarget imaging experiments involving biologically relevant property distributions have been conducted to evaluate its performance relative to a previously developed-waveguide system. A new, simplified, but more effective calibration procedure has also been devised and tested. Results show that the calibration procedure leads to improvements which are independent of the type of radiator used. Specifically, data-model match is found to increase by 0.4 dB in magnitude and 4/spl deg/ in phase for the monopoles and by 0.6 dB in magnitude and 7/spl deg/ in phase for the waveguides (on average) on a per measurement basis when the new calibration procedure is employed. Enhancements are also found in the reconstructed images obtained with the monopole system relative to waveguides. Improvements are observed in: 1) the recovered object shape; 2) the uniformity of the background; 3) edge detection; and 4) target property value recovery. Analyses of reconstructed images also suggest that there is a systematic decrease of approximately 10% in the reconstruction errors for the monopole system over its waveguide counterpart in single-target experiments and as much as a 20% decrease in multitarget cases. Results indicate that these enhancements stem from a better data-model match for the monopoles relative to waveguides which is consistent across the type of calibration procedure used. Comparisons of computations and measurements show an average improvement in data-model match of approximately 0.25 dB in magnitude and near 7/spl deg/ in phase in favor of the monopoles in this regard. Beyond this apparent imaging performance enhancement, the monopole system offers economy-of-space and low construction-cost considerations along with computational advantages (as described herein) which make it a compelling choice as a radiator/receiver element around which to construct a clinically viable near-field microwave imaging system.

A dual mesh scheme for finite element based reconstruction algorithms

The finite element (FE) method has found several applications in emerging imaging modalities, especially microwave imaging which has been shown to be potentially useful in a number of areas including thermal estimation. In monitoring temperature distributions, the biological phenomena of temperature variations of tissue dielectric properties is exploited. By imaging these properties and their changes during such therapies as hyperthermia, temperature distributions can be deduced using difference imaging techniques. The authors focus on a microwave imaging problem where the hybrid element (HE) method is used in conjunction with a dual mesh scheme in an effort to image complex wavenumbers, k(2). The dual mesh scheme is introduced to improve the reconstructed images of tissue properties and is ideally suited for systems using FE methods as their computational base. Since the electric fields typically vary rapidly over a given body when irradiated by high-frequency electromagnetic sources, a dense mesh is needed for these fields to be accurately represented. Conversely, k(2) may be fairly constant over subregions of the body which would allow for a less dense sampling of this parameter in those regions. In the dual mesh system employed, the first mesh, which is uniformly dense, is used for calculating the electric fields over the body whereas the second mesh, which is nonuniform and less dense, is used for representing the k(2) distribution within the region of interest. The authors examine the 2-D TM polarization case for a pair of dielectric distributions on both a large and small problem to demonstrate the flexibility of the dual mesh method along with some of the difficulties associated with larger imaging problems. Results demonstrate the capabilities of the dual mesh concept in comparison to a single mesh approach for a variety of test cases, suggesting that the dual mesh method is critical for FE based image reconstruction where rapidly varying physical quantities are used to recover smoother property profiles, as can occur in microwave imaging of biological bodies.

An active microwave imaging system for reconstruction of 2-D electrical property distributions

The goal of this work is to develop a microwave-based imaging system for hyperthermia treatment monitoring and assessment. Toward this end, a 4-transmit channel and 4-receive channel hardware device and concomitant image reconstruction algorithm have been realized. The hardware is designed to measure electric fields (i.e., amplitude and phase) at various locations in a phantom tank with and without the presence of various heterogeneities using standard heterodyning principles. Particular attention has been paid to designing a receiver with better than 115 dB of linear dynamic range which is necessary for imaging biological tissue which often has very high conductivity, especially for tissues with high water content. A calibration procedure has been developed to compensate for signal loss due to 3-dimensional radiation in the measured data, since the reconstruction process is only 2-dimensional at the present time. Results are shown which demonstrate the stability and accuracy of the measurement system, the extent to which the forward computational model agrees with the measured field distribution when the electrical properties are known, and image reconstructions of electrically unknown targets of varying diameter. In the latter case, images of both the reactive and resistive component of the electrical property distribution have been recoverable. Quantitative information on object location, size, and electrical properties results when the target is approximately one-half wavelength in size. Images of smaller objects lack the same level of quantitative information, but remain qualitatively correct.<<ETX>>