Detection of breast microcalcifications using synthetic-aperture ultrasound

Ultrasound could be an attractive imaging modality for detecting breast microcalcifications, but it requires significant improvement in image resolution and quality. Recently, we have used tissue-equivalent phantoms to demonstrate that synthetic-aperture ultrasound has the potential to detect small targets. In this paper, we study the in vivo imaging capability of a real-time synthetic-aperture ultrasound system for detecting breast microcalcifications. This LANL's (Los Alamos National Laboratory's) custom built synthetic-aperture ultrasound system has a maximum frame rate of 25 Hz, and is one of the very first medical devices capable of acquiring synthetic-aperture ultrasound data and forming ultrasound images in real time, making the synthetic-aperture ultrasound feasible for clinical applications. We recruit patients whose screening mammograms show breast microcalcifications, and use LANL's synthetic-aperture ultrasound system to scan the regions with microcalcifications. Our preliminary in vivo patient imaging results demonstrate that synthetic-aperture ultrasound is a promising imaging modality for detecting breast microcalcifications.