ESTIMATION OF THE SCATTERER DISTRIBUTION OF THE CIRRHOTIC LIVER USINGULTRASONIC IMAGE

In the B-mode image of the liver obtained by an ultrasonic imaging sys tem, the speckled pattern changes with the progression of the disease such as liver cirrhosis. In this paper we present the statistical char acteristics of the echo envelope of the liver, and the technique to ex tract information of the scatterer distribution from the normal and ci rrhotic liver images using constant false alarm rate (CFAR) processing . We analyze the relationship between the extracted scatterer distribu tion and the stage of liver cirrhosis. The ratio of the area in which the amplitude of the processing signal is more than the threshold to t he entire processed image area is related quantitatively to the stage of liver cirrhosis. It is found that the proposed technique is valid f or the quantitative diagnosis of liver cirrhosis.