Simultaneous estimation of attenuation and structure parameters of aggregated red blood cells from backscatter measurements

Abstract

The analysis of the ultrasonic frequency-dependent backscatter coefficient of aggregating red blood cells reveals information about blood structural properties. The difficulty to apply this technique in vivo is due to the frequency-dependent attenuation caused by intervening tissue layers that distorts the spectral content of backscattering properties from blood microstructures. An optimization method is proposed to simultaneously estimate tissue attenuation and blood structure factor. In an in vitro experiment, the method gave satisfactory estimates with relative errors below 22% for attenuations between 0.101 and 0.317 dB/cm/MHz, signal-to-noise ratios>28 dB and kR<2.7 (k being the wave number and R the aggregate radius).