Ultrasound Detection of Scatterer Concentration by Weighted Entropy
1
Department of Medical Imaging and Radiological Sciences, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan
2
Medical Imaging Research Center, Institute for Radiological Research, Chang Gung University and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital at Linkou, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan
3
Department of Electrical Engineering, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan 33302, Taiwan
Academic Editor: Raúl Alcaraz Martínez
Entropy 2015, 17(10), 6598-6616; https://doi.org/10.3390/e17106598
Received: 22 April 2015 / Revised: 18 September 2015 / Accepted: 23 September 2015 / Published: 25 September 2015
(This article belongs to the Section Information Theory, Probability and Statistics)
Ultrasound backscattering signals depend on the microstructures of tissues. Some studies have applied Shannon entropy to analyze the uncertainty of raw radiofrequency (RF) data. However, we found that the sensitivity of entropy in detecting various scatterer concentrations is limited; thus, we propose a weighted entropy as a new information entropy-based approach to enhance the performance of scatterer characterization. A standard simulation model of ultrasound backscattering was used to generate backscattered RF signals with different number densities of scatterers. The RF signals were used to estimate the weighted entropy according to the proposed algorithmic scheme. The weighted entropy increased from 0.08 to 0.23 (representing a dynamic range of 0.15) when the number density of scatterers increased from 2 to 32 scatterers/mm2. In the same range of scatterer concentration, the conventional entropy increased from 0.16 to 0.19 (a dynamic range of 0.03). The results indicated that the weighted entropy enables achieving a more sensitive detection of the variation of scatterer concentrations by ultrasound.
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Keywords:
information entropy; weighted entropy; ultrasound
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MDPI and ACS Style
Tsui, P.-H. Ultrasound Detection of Scatterer Concentration by Weighted Entropy. Entropy 2015, 17, 6598-6616. https://doi.org/10.3390/e17106598
AMA Style
Tsui P-H. Ultrasound Detection of Scatterer Concentration by Weighted Entropy. Entropy. 2015; 17(10):6598-6616. https://doi.org/10.3390/e17106598
Chicago/Turabian StyleTsui, Po-Hsiang. 2015. "Ultrasound Detection of Scatterer Concentration by Weighted Entropy" Entropy 17, no. 10: 6598-6616. https://doi.org/10.3390/e17106598
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