Noninvasive temperature monitoring in a wide range based on textures of ultrasound images

The B-mode ultrasound is widely used in thermal therapies as an invasive technique for temperature measurement and monitoring the effectiveness of the treatment. In traditional technique the B-mode ultrasound can only measure a small range of temperature changes using the gray scale of images. We obtained a series of real-time B-mode ultrasound images with a wide range of temperature variation from 28°C to 85°C. In this paper, we investigate image texture characteristics with respect to changes of tissue temperature. Results from water bath and radiofrequency ablation experiments show that there is a strong correlation between several texture features and temperature in a wide range of 28-85°C.