Effect of adaptive threshold filtering on ultrasonic Nakagami parameter to detect variation in scatterer concentration

The Nakagami parameter is associated with the Nakagami distribution estimated from ultrasonic backscattered signals and closely reflects the scatterer concentrations in tissues. There is an interest in exploring the possibility of enhancing the ability of the Nakagami parameter to characterize tissues. In this paper, we explore the effect of adaptive threshold filtering based on the noise-assisted empirical mode decomposition of the ultrasonic backscattered signals on the Nakagami parameter as a function of scatterer concentration for improving the Nakagami parameter performance. We carried out phantom experiments using 5 MHz focused and nonfocused transducers. Before filtering, the dynamic ranges of the Nakagami parameter, estimated using focused and nonfocused transducers between the scatterer concentrations of 2 and 32 scatterers/mm³, were 0.44 and 0.1, respectively. After filtering, the dynamic ranges of the Nakagami parameter, using the focused and nonfocused transducers, were 0.71 and 0.79, respectively. The experimental results showed that the adaptive threshold filter makes the Nakagami parameter measured by a focused transducer more sensitive to the variation in the scatterer concentration. The proposed method also endows the Nakagami parameter measured by a nonfocused transducer with the ability to differentiate various scatterer concentrations. However, the Nakagami parameters estimated by focused and nonfocused transducers after adaptive threshold filtering have different physical meanings: the former represents the statistics of signals backscattered from unresolvable scatterers while the latter is associated with stronger resolvable scatterers or local inhomogeneity due to scatterer aggregation.