Acoustic impedance measurement of tissue mimicking phantoms by using scanning acoustic microscopy

Abstract

Phantoms are imaging objects used as stand-ins for human tissues to guarantee that algorithms and methods for monitoring the human body are functioning properly. Thus, characterization of them prior to clinical trials plays a vital role. By that, in this thesis, we aimed to characterize breast, liver and blood tissue mimicking phantoms through acoustic impedance measurements recorded by 80 MHz Scanning Acoustic Microscopy (SAM) and propose a novel and fast technique for measuring a variety of soft tissue phantoms. To our best knowledge, it is the first study that suggests SAM operating at acoustic impedance measurement mode for the quantification of tissue-mimicking phantoms. We achieved to produce breast (soft) tissue mimicking phantoms which have acoustic impedance values between the range of 1.373 0.031 and 1.707 0.036 MRayl. Our acoustic impedance measurements provide the result of 1.693 0.085 MRayl for the liver tissue mimicking phantom and 1.624 0.006 MRayl for the blood tissue mimicking phantom which is very close to acoustic impedance values of human tissues.|Keywords : Blood, Breast, Liver, Soft Tissue, Tissue Mimicking, Phantom, Acoustic Impedance, Scanning Acoustic Microscopy