PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION OF ULTRASOUND SCATTERING ANALYSIS TO IDENTIFY WOMEN AT RISE FOR LATER INVASIVE CANCER .2. EXTRACTION OF DOMINANT SCATTERING ANGLE-DEPENDENT TRENDS FROM EXCISED BREAST-TISSUE

Normalized estimates of the scattering angle-dependent differential sc attering cross-section (DSC) at 1.0 MHz were measured from 278 samples of excised breast tissue taken from 66 women. A comparison of results for samples that contained tissue structures previously associated wi th an increased probability of developing breast cancer to those that did not contain high-risk structures showed that the average magnitude of DSC estimates was insufficient to identify samples with high-risk lesions. Principal component factor analysis (PCFA) was applied to ext ract scattering angle-dependent trends common to the entire data base. The normalized estimates of the measured DSCs (NDSC) from tissue samp les are compared to estimates previously obtained from isolated breast tissue lobules as well as with results from the PCFA. Results are pre sented that indicate that the dominant angle-dependent trends in the N DSC results are independent of the age of the patient and are similar to trends extracted from isolated breast tissue lobules. The breast ti ssue structure common to all of these specimens is the terminal duct.