Properly accounting for ultrasound scattering from heterogeneities within the breast is essential for highresolution ultrasound breast imaging. This requires a reflectivity image reconstruction method capable of accurately handling ultrasound scattering. We develop an optimized ultrasound-wave propagator for reflectivity image reconstruction using pulse-echo ultrasound signals. The method is based on a solution of one-way wave equation and recursive inward continuation of ultrasound wavefields in the frequency-space and frequency-wavenumber domains using a heterogeneous sound-speed model of the breast obtained from tomography. It minimizes ultrasound phase errors during wavefield inward continuation while maintaining the advantage of high computational efficiency. Pulseecho ultrasound imaging tests for a numerical breast phantom demonstrate that our optimized method has the potential to improve the reliability and accuracy of ultrasound breast imaging.
Keywords: wavefield propagator, pulse-echo imaging, ultrasound tomographic reconstruction
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Send e-mail to author at kmh@lanl.gov