RF signal amplitude statistics during temperature changes in tissue phantoms

Two heating protocols for soft tissue phantoms have been performed. An Agar-Gel-Oil (AGO) mixture has been heated locally by applying ultrasonic beams and a Poly Vinyl Alcohol-cryogel (PVA-c) has been heated “globally” by a water bath with a controlled temperature rise. The RF signals were collected during heating by an ultrasound transducer to ensure no interference from waves from the heating transducer. Independently, the thermocouples' measurement has been used to obtain temperature as a function of time in the AGO case. At first, a compensation of attenuation was performed and normalized envelopes of signals were used as data for statistical analysis. It is shown that random the values of the backscattered amplitude are close to Rayleigh and K-distributed random variables for AGO and PVA-c, respectively. Temperature is linked to the scale parameter of Rayleigh distribution for the AGO, and the shape parameter of K-distribution for PVA-c were calculated and discussed in the context of their suitability for the acoustic measurement of temperature.