Refraction-corrected backscatter tensor imaging of excised porcine ventricular myocardium.

Backscatter tensor imaging (BTI) is performed on excised porcine right- and left-ventricular myocardium to estimate the transmural myofiber orientation. Calculation of the backscatter spatial coherence employs measured sound speeds of the myocardium and the fluid that separates the tissue from the imaging array to account for effects of refraction during the delay-and-sum beamforming calculation. Compared to the assumption of a homogeneous sound speed in the imaging region, accounting for refraction yields significantly increased average spatial coherence as well as contrast of spatial coherence between the along- and across-fiber directions, thus improving sensitivity of BTI for myofiber orientation estimation.