Influence exerted by bone-containing target body on thermoacoustic imaging with current injection

作     者：Yan-Hong Li Guo-Qiang Liu Jia-Xiang Song Hui Xia 李艳红;刘国强;宋佳祥;夏慧

作者机构：Institute of Electrical Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences University of Chinese Academy of Sciences 

出 版 物：《Chinese Physics B》 (中国物理B（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2019年第28卷第4期

页      面：230-241页

核心收录：

学科分类：07[理学] 0805[工学-材料科学与工程（可授工学、理学学位）] 0704[理学-天文学] 0702[理学-物理学] 

基　　金：Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.51477161) the National Key Research and Development Program of China(Grant No.2018YFC0115200) the Fund from the Chinese Academy of Sciences(Grant No.YZ201507) 

主　　题：biomedical imaging thermo-acoustic imaging fluid–solid coupling low conductivity 

摘      要：Thermoacoustic imaging with current injection(TAI-CI) is a novel imaging technology that couples with electromagnetic and acoustic research, which combines the advantages of high contrast of the electrical impedance tomography and the high spatial resolution of sonography, and therefore has the potential for early diagnosis. To verify the feasibility of TAI-CI for complex bone-containing biological tissues, the principle of TAI-CI and the coupling characteristics of fluid and solid were analyzed. Meanwhile, thermoacoustic(TA) effects for fluid model and fluid–solid coupling model were analyzed by numerical simulations. Moreover, we conducted experiments on animal cartilage, hard bone and biological soft tissue phantom with low conductivity(0.5 S/m). By injecting a current into the phantom, the thermoacoustic signal was detected by the ultrasonic transducer with a center frequency of 1 MHz, thereby the B-scan image of the objects was obtained. The B-scan image of the cartilage experiment accurately reflects the distribution of cartilage and gel, and the hard bone has a certain attenuation effect on the acoustic signal. However, compared with the ultrasonic imaging, the thermoacoustic signal is only attenuated during the outward propagation. Even in this case, a clear image can still be obtained and the images can reflect the change of the conductivity of the gel. This study confirmed the feasibility of TAI-CI for the imaging of biological tissue under the presence of cartilage and the bone. The novel TAI-CI method provides further evidence that it can be used in the diagnosis of human diseases.