Analysis of microstructural alterations of normal and pathological breast tissue in vivo using the AR cepstrum.

The mean scatterer spacing is considered to be an important parameter for describing ultrasonic scattering and characterization of biological tissue. Autoregressive models are widely used in parametric techniques for spectral estimation. In this paper, we describe the results of a careful examination of the mean scatterer spacing parameter in normal and pathological breast tissues in vivo using the autoregressive cepstrum. Our experimental results carried out at 4.5 MHz using weakly focused pulse-echo single element transducer show that the mean scatterer spacing in normal breast tissues in vivo is 1.25+/-0.21 mm whereas in several pathological breast tissues, it is between 0.82+/-0.10 and 1.09+/-0.07 mm. These results indicate good correlation with microstructure of breast tissue characterization, and hence the AR cepstrum holds promise that it could be used as an effective method for signal analysis of ultrasonic scattering and characterization of breast tissues scatterers.