Self-Supervised Optimization of RF Data Coherence for Improving Breast Reflection UCT Reconstruction

Abstract

The reflection ultrasound computed tomography (UCT) is gaining prominence as an essential instrument for breast cancer screening. However, reflection UCT quality is often compromised by the variability in sound speed across breast tissue. Traditionally, reflection UCT utilizes the delay-and-sum (DAS) algorithm, where the time of flight (TOF) significantly affects the coherence of the reflected radio frequency (RF) data, based on an oversimplified assumption of uniform sound speed. This study introduces three meticulously engineered modules that leverage the spatial correlation of receiving arrays to improve the coherence of RF data and enable more effective summation. These modules include the self-supervised blind RF data segment block (BSegB) and the state-space model-based strong reflection prediction (SSM-SRP) block, followed by a polarity-based adaptive replacing refinement (PARR) strategy to suppress sidelobe noise caused by aperture narrowing. To assess the effectiveness of our method, we utilized standard image quality metrics, including peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity index measure (SSIM), and root mean squared error (RMSE). In addition, coherence factor (CF) and variance (Var) were employed to verify the method’s ability to enhance signal coherence at the RF data level. The findings reveal that our approach greatly improves performance, achieving an average PSNR of 19.64 dB, an average SSIM of 0.71, and an average RMSE of 0.10, notably under conditions of sparse transmission. The conducted experimental analyses affirm the superior performance of our framework compared to alternative enhancement strategies, including adaptive beamforming methods and deep learning-based beamforming approaches.