Development of a new diagnostic system for human liver diseases based on conventional ultrasonic diagnostic equipment

The authors show the experimental results of a quantitative ultrasonic diagnosis technique for human liver diseases using the fractal dimensions (FD) of the shape of the power spectra (PS) of RF signals. We have developed an experimental system based on a conventional ultrasonic diagnostic system, and applied the signal processing technique to RF signals from the conventional system. As a result, we show that normal livers, fatty livers and liver cirrhosis can be identified by the FD values. We also show that the degree of fatty livers can be estimated by FD values.