Quantitative Characterization of Concentrated Cell Pellet Biophantoms using Statistical Models for the Ultrasound Echo Envelope

International audienceStatistical analysis is performed on the envelopes of ultrasonic backscattered signals from concentrated human leukemia cell pellet biophantoms. Two statistical distributions (Nakagami and Homodyned-K) are used to assess scatterer concentration. Seven concentrations ranging from 0.006 to 0.30 (corresponding to 3 to 250 scatterers per resolution cell at 25 and 35MHz) are considered. The values of the Nakagami parameter m increase with the number of scatterers per resolution cell but plateaus around 1 for concentrations greater than 0.03, while the Homodyned-K parameter α continued to increase and does not plateau, even if the estimation is less precise